2B ❚THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019❚ USA TODAY SPORTS
Thou shalt not shift defensively, but you
may “steal” first base – gives hitters op-
tions beyond launching balls over a vex-
ing alignment of fielders.
Yet as its experiment with a “robotic”
strike zone and other nuances enters its
second month, the formal partnership
between MLB and the Atlantic League
illustrates the upsides and conse-
quences of optimization.
Umpire-player conflicts might be
few. That doesn’t mean players, man-
agers and umpires don’t feel somewhat
conflicted about their roles as pioneers
when the outcome might eventually
marginalize their respective crafts.
“I think it’s really cool to be around
this,” says Kent Blackstone, the short-
stop for the Southern Maryland Blue
Crabs, “because if they can get it right, I
see this being in Major League Baseball
in three to five years.
“For us to be the first ones to use it, if I
want to get into the operations of base-
ball, I can say I was there during all this.
I try to shift it to the positive.”
Spend an August day in the Atlantic
League, and you get the overwhelming
sense it’s only a matter of when, not if,
the radical experiments bubble up to the
big leagues. When MLB officials de-
scended on the Blue Crabs’ training
camp in Lakeland, Florida, to discuss
this most unusual season to come, mo-
mentum was palpable.
“There’s a lot of people who say, ‘This
will never be passed at the major league
level,’ ” says Stan Cliburn, the Blue
Crabs’ 62-year-old manager. “Well, peo-
ple better look back and see that base-
ball’s about change, life’s about change.
Is it the direction Major League Baseball
is going? They’re certainly taking a hard
look at it.”
Yet the “robot ump” path from inde-
pendent ball to the big leagues will have
its detours. The greater dilemma might
revolve around what’s lost on the way.
‘You have to adapt’
An ominous device affixed to Atlantic
League stadium façades goes a long way
toward making the players feel like big-
leaguers.
TrackMan is the device that powers
MLB’s Statcast, producing a trove of
statistics that are increasingly main-
stream. TrackMan also provides the
brainpower behind the automated ball-
strike system, peering down on home
plate. Although inanimate, it pops up in
conversations in manners like, “Well,
TrackMan missed that one,” or, “I think
the TrackMan went out for a bit.”
And TrackMan certainly has its
quirks. For one, do not lie to TrackMan.
Blackstone found this out the hard
way. Since he has not played affiliated
ball, the 25-year-old shortstop had no
previous data – such as height or bat-
ting stance – in the TrackMan system.
Trouble was, the generous height
was entered in the system to establish
his strike zone. So in his first few games
with the auto strike zone, several very
high strikes were called against him.
“I always say I’m 6 foot,” says Black-
stone. “But that’s over, man.”
Therein lies one bug. While the strike
zone is intended to be uniform, in any
stadium, members of the Blue Crabs
and Long Island Ducks pointed out
parks with obvious variances. High
Point likes the high strike. Lancaster
(Pennsylvania) was missing the low
strike, the true pitcher’s pitch.
Overall, the system received high
marks for its lateral work, nailing pitch-
es on either edge of the plate. Vertically?
Not so much.
Says Blackstone: “There have been
times where the ball hits the ground and
they’re calling it a strike. Textbook-
wise, it might be a strike. We all would
like to not get hosed on a strike three on
a ball at our ankles. But you have to
adapt.”
Or develop a foolproof system.
TrackMan is just one of many pitch
tracking systems available, though
many of the best are on-field devices
and not suitable for live game action.
Multiple reports indicate MLB will be
shifting from TrackMan to the Hawk-
Eye tracking system – best known for its
work policing tennis serves – for Stat-
cast and other purposes in 2020.
“There were a couple games where
TrackMan malfunctioned,” says Blue
Crabs right-hander Daryl Thompson, a
2003 draftee of the Expos. “In the mid-
dle of the at-bat, the umpire would be
like, ‘Hey Stan, this one’s going to be on
me. TrackMan’s broke right now.’ That
right there to me says this isn’t baseball
if we’re going to be doing that.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in-
dicated last month that automated ball-
strike systems would get an extended
look in affiliated minor league ball be-
fore any serious consideration was giv-
en toward using them in the majors. “We
kind of feel it’s incumbent to figure out
whether we could make it work,” he
said, “and that’s what we are doing.”That might put another baseball fix-
ture – the home-plate umpire – on the
clock.Just one four-letter wordAfter MLB instituted significant re-
play review for the 2014 season, it was
impossible not to notice how much qui-
eter it was on the field, with little for
managers to argue. It’s even quieter for
Atlantic League umps, who now hear
only one-four letter word when they
work the plate.
Ball.
The call comes straight from the
automated ball-strike system to their
earpiece.
“You hear the pop,” says Atlantic
League ump Jerry Martinez of the
roughly two seconds it takes for pitch
litigation. “And then you hear the voice.
Strike, or ball.
“And then you have to render your
mechanic. If it’s a strike, you call it a
strike.”Backstop bluesLet’s tally the casualties of baseball’s
enacted and proposed rule changes.
Instant replay killed most of the
game’s arguments. An automatic strike
zone would marginalize the home-plate
umpire. A three-batter minimum for re-
lievers – in place in the Atlantic League
and slated for enactment in the 2020
MLB season – would render the lefty re-
lief specialist virtually extinct.
And in an automated era of balls and
strikes, the catcher would be rendered
almost irrelevant.
The most important position on the
field – a virtual breeding ground for fu-
ture major league managers – would be
reduced to the mere act of catching theball, destroying the art of pitch-framing
at a time advanced metrics have quanti-
fied the skill better than ever.
Mike Falsetti is training the next gen-
eration of receivers how to receive. Now,
he’s not sure what to think. The 28-
year-old Blue Crabs catcher is no Crash
Davis – he has six home runs and a.
average in five years of independent ball- but his measured vibe and cerebral
nature make him a dead ringer for any
major league backup catcher.
Every pitch whose ball-strike fate is
determined before it meets his glove
feels like another dig at his livelihood.
“The changes it makes to the position
are drastic,” he says. “I’ve always
thought every single pitch that’s re-
ceived, the catcher has to earn the strike
call. TrackMan rewards the lazy catcher,
the bad receiver, and devalues the good
receivers, and that’s a big part of the
game.”
No more, at least not here.
Falsetti says the catcher-ump rela-
tionship remains, but it’s more a com-
miseration of their shared fate, and an
occasional ask of whether the pitch
would have been a strike if the ump had
an actual say in the matter.
“I know they just want to get it right,”
says Falsetti. “And it has been right, for
the most part. It’s going to take a lot for
the (TrackMan zone) to get to the big
leagues. And I just hope that process
sheds light on just how important that
good-receiving catcher is.”
It will be up to Manfred, or perhaps
his successor, and the players’ associa-
tion to determine that cost.
In the meantime, the self-proclaimed
guinea pigs of the Atlantic League will
play on.
“You can’t yell at that machine up
there,” says Cliburn. “He’s not gonna
listen.”
Robo-calls
Continued from Page 1B
Home-plate umpire Brian deBrauwere checks an iPhone while wearing an earpiece before the start of the Atlantic League
All-Star Game. The umpire receives information about balls and strikes with the device connected to a TrackMan computer
system that uses Doppler radar. JULIO CORTEZ/APtions that are political in nature as
members of an American team under
the auspices of the USOPC.
But Hirshland wisely did not do that.
She formally reprimanded both ath-
letes, telling them in letters obtained by
USA TODAY Sports that they were con-
sidered to be “in a probationary period
for the next 12 months.” She added that
this means they could face “more seri-
ous sanctions for any additional breach
of our code of conduct than might other-
wise be levied for an athlete in good
standing.”
But her letters were most notable for
what they did not do. Imboden and Ber-
ry are not suspended or otherwise pun-
ished. They are not prohibited from
competing, practicing or participating
in any other similar activities, now or in
the future.
Hirshland, in effect, slapped their
wrists and told them not to do it again.
And then she let them go on their way.
There’s more. As she wrote, “You
have made clear that you were demon-
strating to bring attention to the current
state of affairs in our country and to call
for change. I applaud your decision to be
an active citizen. It is admirable. Re-
gardless of one’s viewpoint, it is a fun-
damental freedom and important obli-
gation that we each hold to participate
actively in the pursuit of a better coun-
try and a better world.”
She went on in a similar vein for an-
other paragraph, brilliantly sending a
message to Imboden, Berry and hun-
dreds of other U.S. athletes who are
hoping to represent the country at next
summer’s Olympics in Tokyo that she
stands with them in these fractured and
divisive times. The last thing Hirshland
wanted to do was lose the trust of the
athletes who will perform on that grand
stage next year in Tokyo. By writing the
letter she wrote, she likely ensured that
she now has that trust, along with dol-
lops of goodwill.
In a further nod of respect to the wave
of athlete protests that have swept the
nation during Trump’s presidency,
Hirshland wrote that she plans to work
with the International Olympic Com-mittee and International Paralympic
Committee as well as athletes them-
selves to “more clearly define for Team
USA athletes what a breach of these
rules will mean in the future.”
While it’s easy to get caught up in the
moment and say every athlete should be
able to do whatever he or she wants on a
Pan Am Games or Olympic medal stand
in these historic times, even the fiercest
Trump opponent should pause and con-
sider what that might look like. It would
be chaotic at best, madness at worst – a
kaleidoscope of opinions across the
spectrum, likely accompanied by pins,
banners, flags, even bumper stickers.
This would be playing out in the midst of
the 2020 presidential campaign in the
United States, so for every anti-Trump
protest on a Tokyo medal stand, therecould be a pro-Trump protest. And it
wouldn’t be just U.S. athletes but those
from every corner of the globe who
could, say, refuse to stand with those
from countries they abhor, be it for po-
litical or religious reasons, and get away
with it. Athletes’ performances would
be lost in a sea of controversy and pro-
test, turning the Games into a circus.
In her letters to Imboden and Berry,
Hirshland said that her action was “not
related to the content or legitimacy of
your grievance, but rather to the context
of where it occurred and the obligation
each of us has to abide by the policies we
agree to in order to ensure the Games
succeed in their purpose for many years
to come.”
She added that she wants “to be part
of finding more robust opportunities for
athletes to use their voices in a mean-
ingful way.”
Some U.S. athletes have long since
discovered those opportunities, all well
within the rules. Ironically, the athlete
whose dissent will be best remembered
this summer is Megan Rapinoe, who
called herself a “walking protest” of
Trump in her many interviews and so-
cial media posts, but abided completely
by the guidelines she signed as a mem-
ber of the U.S. women’s soccer team
while standing with her hands clasped
behind her back, not singing the nation-
al anthem.
While the medal stand might beckon
for Rapinoe and so many others, it could
well be the microphone that has the far-
thest reach.Brennan
Continued from Page 1B
U.S. fencer Race Imboden kneels during the national anthem at the Pan American
Games. LEONARDO FERNANDE/GETTY IMAGES