The so-called “Robo-ump” made its way to Charleston for the first time Friday night, and received pretty good first reviews from West Virginia Power players and coaches.
The electronic strike zone, whereby Trackman technology takes the responsibility of calling balls and strikes away from the umpire, was used for the first time in the Power’s 12-3 loss to the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in both teams’ Atlantic League season opener at Appalachian Power Park.
The Trackman technology is essentially a set of cameras strategically stationed at the ballpark and linked to a computer in the press box. It’s all operated by employees of Major League Baseball, which, for the second season — 2019 was the first — is experimenting with and testing the technology in the Atlantic League to see if it might eventually be viable at the major-league level.
When Trackman determines that a pitch is a strike, it immediately sends an audible signal to the home-plate umpire via the earpiece he’s wearing, and the ump will raise his right arm or otherwise indicate a strike in the traditional manner if the pitch crosses through any portion of the predetermined strike zone.
Arik Sikula, the Power’s starting pitcher in the opener, was the first to test the technology. The former South Charleston, Hurricane and Marshall hurler wasn’t happy with his performance — he took the loss after allowing five runs in five innings — but his first experience with the electronic strike zone was a good one.
The first batter Sikula faced, Southern Maryland’s Zach Collier, struck out looking. Home-plate ump John Grasso gave the signal, but it was Trackman that determined the pitch was in the strike zone.
“Overall, I think I got a couple calls up in the zone that I wasn’t necessarily expecting to get, that wouldn’t have traditionally been called by a human umpire,” Sikula said. “And I got a couple sliders that I threw down in the zone that I thought should’ve been called strikes that were called balls.
“So half and half, but overall the higher strike was being called more than I was expecting.”
Sikula said adjusting to the electronic strike zone will be a learning process that could affect his approach on the mound.
“If I keep getting those calls up in the zone I might try to hit those spots more and incorporate more pitches up in the zone, which are a little harder to hit,” Sikula said. “But for the first game it was just more of an observation before I implement it into my approach.”
For Yovan Gonzalez, the Power’s starting catcher in the opener, it wasn’t his first experience with the electronic strike zone. The 31-year-old from Puerto Rico, who was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds out of Wabash Valley College in Illinois, encountered the technology when it was first implemented in the Atlantic League in 2019 when he was catching for the Somerset Patriots.
He said he thinks the technology has improved since then.
“[Friday night] it was way more consistent than in 2019,” Gonzalez said Saturday afternoon before the Power and Blue Crabs hooked up in the second game of the opening series. “They modified it, put more room on the corners and are giving us the black [the frame of home plate]. It seems more realistic now.”
Gonzalez also talked about how pitch-framing — a commodity among catchers, judging their ability to frame the pitch to make it look like a strike when it might not be — is becoming a lost art with the advent of the Robo-ump technology.
“That’s changed a little bit,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t have to stick pitches and trick the guy behind me into calling it a strike. There’s a lot of catchers in the big leagues now that know how to [frame pitches] and steal some strikes. Now we don’t have that, and it changes the catcher’s job a little bit. Now it’s just receiving the ball.”
Also lost with the strike-zone technology is century-old tradition of questioning the umpires’ ball-strike calls. Griping to the man behind the plate is an exercise in futility for catcher, pitcher and batter alike.
“When I think a pitch is a strike and he calls it a ball, and I say, ‘My gosh, come on,’ he just points to his ear [where the umpire receives the strike prompt]. “Sometimes [umpires] know the [technology’s] calls are not the best calls, but the machine is perfect — that’s what they say — so a strike is a strike.”
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West Virginia Power: Players give thumbs up on electronic strike zone - Charleston Gazette-Mail
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