RUMOR: ROBOTS ARE COMING TO A MLB STADIUM NEAR YOU

If you are a baseball purist you are not going to like this one.....

Major changes could be coming to Major League Baseball soon, maybe. You can read more about it HERE but "robot umpires" are being used in 11 Pacific Coast League Triple-A stadiums and if you are a baseball traditionalist I bet you are mind blown right now.

But we knew this was a possibility years ago. Sure, there are a lot of "bad calls" in baseball and they seem to be more and more common every year. I got fired up about a bad call back in 2019 when I wrote AARON BOONE IS "WAITING" FOR AN EXPLANATION WHILE WE WAIT FOR ROBOTS and I got a few tweets from people who thought the idea of robots in baseball was insane.

And it might be, but I wrote that while I was completely annoyed. Any avid baseball fan knows how much this game has changed over the years, especially with Rob Manfred in charge and the most drastic changes may still be to come.

Can you image that though? ROBOTS calling balls and strikes from behind the plate. I am twitching just thinking about it. I completely agree that there are some infuriating calls sometimes in baseball and they can make you lose your cool completely but...it's part of the game. It's part of the human element. The umpires decisions (whether we like them or not) are part of the game! If you take out the human element of the game (even though flawed) and replace it with a robot....is it even baseball anymore? It sounds more like a video game.

And if you use robots to call balls and strikes why stop there? Does artificial intelligence just completely take over? It's crazy to think about, but honestly 30 years ago this robot idea was also crazy! I know baseball is trying to appeal to a younger demographic but is completely giving it a face lift the right idea? Alienating an existing fan base seems like a drastic idea but what do I know? Maybe I am wrong.

But honestly, if someone was looking for a reason to stop watching the game could this be that reason? Maybe. The passionate baseball fan inside of me truly hopes not. Reading some of the details of that article, they just don't make sense to me. When I look at the two examples used of Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve, Judge is 13" taller than Altuve but his strike zone is 3 inches larger.  Why is the lower part of the zone on Altuve below his knee, but Judge it is above his knee? Who came up with this magical formula? Whoever it was, please do not quit your day job or sell this insane idea that makes no sense.

Look, I love the strategy and the human element to this game even though it is insanely flawed at times. I like the idea that Aaron Boone can get so annoyed at an umpire that he flies out of the dugout screaming and yelling and maybe even kicks dirt at him. It gets us fired up inside! It creates a reaction.....

I know everything must evolve including baseball but newer isn't always better. Robots worked fine in the Jetsons cartoon but why baseball? I'm all for improvements but it feels like MLB is doing everything it can to make baseball The Great American Past-its-Time and I'm just not okay with that.

--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa

BYB Senior Managing Editor

Twitter: @nyprincessj