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Max Scherzer for Robot -Pumps after the first Blue Jays started: “Can we only be judged by humans?”

Max Scherzer for Robot -Pumps after the first Blue Jays started: “Can we only be judged by humans?”

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“We are people. Can we simply be assessed by humans? “

– Max Scherzer on Tuesday after his first start of spring training.

Dunedin, Fla. – Mr. Robot, meet Mr. Scherzer. You two have a lot to speak.

Historians will always look at Max Scherzer on Tuesday in the TD Baseball park when his first spring training starts as a member of Toronto Blue Jay. But all of your technicians out there know differently. What this really was was clearly Scherzer, the first Big League start with these robot dumps.

It was only a matter of time before these two were officially introduced. It didn't take long.

On Scherzer's 11th pitch of the day, the Cardinal Center Field Field Lars Nocetbarar took a fastball right in front of the outer corner. Human Romp, Roberto Ortiz, called it a strike. NooTbarar immediately typed on his cap to challenge this call.

The judgment of Mr. Robot-ECH known as the automatic Ball-Strike system (ABS), which will be tested for the first time this spring by Big Leaguers–War … No strike.

UH-OH.

Scherzer shook his head, then went back to work and finally excluded Nootbarar. Take that, robot fans.

But an inning later became more dramatic. With two outs in the second inning, Scherzer broke off a loop curve ball for the JJ Wetherholt of the Cardinals, which seemed to be under the zone and was called the ball by Ortiz. But while we learn this spring, sudden ball knit decisions are not final.

This time it was Scherzer who typed his cap to challenge. But again the robot technology was not on its side-of the local person agreed that this pitch was as far below the strike zone as it seemed to the untrobotized eye.

So you had it. Two innings. Two challenges. Two triumphs for robot species. Zero triumph for Mad max.

On the one hand, it didn't mean much. It's just spring training. It's just an experiment. And these robots do not come to a big league park near them during this regular season.

On the other hand, this was not just a random jug who was tinkering with life on this challenge system. This was Max Scherzer, Future Hall of Famer and a man with several opinions that is known. And … one of these opinions, like everyone who was with him this spring, could tell them that he is not a member of the Robot U were fan club.

So if you think that he had some thoughts in Roboten world on his first day, you are clearly familiar with his work.

“I'm a little skeptical,” said Scherzer. “I understand what we try here, but I think Major League referee are really good. They are Really Good. So what do we actually change here? We know that there will be strikes that are changed to balls and balls that are changed in strikes. So we will basically be even. So will we actually improve the game? Are the referees really that bad? I don't believe. “

He was rolling.

When asked if he said that if these challenges were 50-50 split, there is no real net profit, Scherzer had to share another wave of thoughts.

“No,” he said, “I pay attention to it. You know, my stomach is that it will be 50-50 and you won't have a net profit. (But) I'm waiting. We'll see. But for me I just think that the referees are really good.

Then he grabbed an imaginary canvas and started an idea of ​​how life always worked with human referees.

When a pitcher hits its place and pops the catcher's glove, the human UP reward that, said “and” you could get a quarter inch “. But if a pitcher misses a place with a backup slider, for example, he could tick the striking zone, but human UMP know that he does not reward this miss – “and they call it a ball.”

“So we always played baseball,” said Scherzer. “This is something like that looks normal. You know when you come to this (robot) world when we sit there and say that it is a laser zone, then we don't care whether a pitcher hits or not. “

Of course, it is technically correct – but only if a pitch is questioned. So isn't there a part of him, he was asked who only wants the opportunity to challenge himself and reverse a decisive call?

“If we said it was only a challenge in the game, period, it might be,” he said. But in a world in which there are several challenges, he is not so safe about the effects.

“I'm skeptical,” said Scherzer. “I understand what we try to do, but I'm skeptical about what the results will actually be.”

We noticed it!

It should be remembered that the player's feedback is the most important goal of this entire experiment. And we have a sneaky feeling that MLB will receive something from this valuable feedback from Scherzer. But when he was asked whether he was going to challenge a lot this spring, he had a surprising answer.

“Not really, no,” he replied. “It was a rare event for me, with a curve ball, to actually see whether this is actually a strike or not.”

So this challenge was only a small fact mission, he said, to get a feeling for how the robots would call this certain pitch. But then this conversation met further equipment when Scherzer was informed that a few years ago in a previous three-dimensional permutation of the ABS system likely likely likely would were referred to as strikes, in contrast to the same pitch from the current two -dimensional version.

“Wait, I thought it was the whole record,” said Scherzer. “Now we have to redefine what the strike zone is now? They said it was a 3-D zone. Now we have a 2-D zone? Wasn't it always a 3-D zone? “

Hoo boy. That was too GEEKY, but let's go there. People can live in a 3-D world. But ABS has proven to be technologically more precise through not Persecution to see if a pitch ticks a corner of a part of the 3-D striking zone. Instead, it basically measures in 2-D whether a pitch crosses the zone of an imaginary glass pane in the middle of the plate.

Scherzer listened to this explanation and laughed.

“We go down the worm hole so far,” he said.

But that didn't prevent him from expressing his greatest frustration of everyone.

“Can we just play baseball?” he asked. “We are people. Can we only be assessed by humans? Do we really have to disturb the game? I think people are defined by people. “

Well, in the actual human news, Scherzer drove out two strong innings against the cardinals, so that only one goal and four four were hit. He is with excellent health, he said. And he only looked at this for a “normal” spring start in almost every respect.

Apart from a path that is. So these robots have to be fully attentive, because whatever the rest of us may think of him, “normal” is not the word that Scherzer seems ready to describe them.

Go deeper

The Blue Jay's think about what could have been, the too longest team blue-jay team and what is ahead of us

(Photo: Jonathan Dyer / Imagn Pictures)

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