MLB Gameday site mum on strike zone disappearance

Major League Baseball has an official Gameday site, which includes updates on various changes to the program.

May 17, 2007
Gameday chat update

Sept 04, 2007
Video Tour and Chat Update

No special announcement of the strike zone changes (the Sept. 4 entry is the most recent as of this writing). People noticed, however. Here is a selection of comments from the Video Tour and Chat Update entry, in chronological order:

Where's the strike-zone gone?

Posted by: miquelcastillo@yahoo | September 6, 2007 08:30 PM

Yeah I cant see it either this $uck$ I cant tell how good the calls are. Home Run Big Papi!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: mphamod@hot | September 6, 2007 08:43 PM

what happened to the strikezone, i can't see it either

Posted by: x@yx | September 6, 2007 10:43 PM

The strikezone is gone and that is horrible. Maybe they dont want people to see how bad some of the calls are? Also the indepth pitch information is not coming up. I am not happy with this.

Posted by: porterhouse8@g | September 7, 2007 08:07 PM

WHERE THE HELL IS THE STRIKEZONE! AND NOT EVEN A DAMN SORRY FOR THE LIES!

WE'RE TIRED OF WAITING. GO TO ESPN.COM!

IN THE PREVIOUS AT-BATS THING ON TOP, ALL OF THE BALL SPOTS ARE GREY! WHAT THE HELL GUYS?

Posted by: synjoker@aol | September 7, 2007 11:02 PM

Yeah, I noticed how bad the calls were last week.. and poof! the strike zone is gone. funny how that works. Thanks MLB [official site of Major League Baseball] -- Also I can't seem to turn off the pitch animation, it slows everything down -- thanks for the faster, lighter GameDay, MLB!

Posted by: tweeddel@yahoo | September 8, 2007 07:21 PM

I've moved to ESPN Gamecast. Get your act together MLB Gameday

Posted by: tweeddel@yahoo | September 8, 2007 07:29 PM

i'm on gamecast too. no strikezone, that's horse**** mlb. you guys are a bunch of cowards, go after the umps instead of the fans.

Posted by: schmitmg@hot | September 9, 2007 04:22 PM

No strike zone? Why don't you just replace the pitch interface with a giant banner reading "We hide the poor quality work of our employees!"

Posted by: tytrain@g | September 9, 2007 04:53 PM

Where'd the strike zone go? Afraid we will hate the umps? Newflash: WE ALREADY DO!

Posted by: acenorthpaw@hot | September 9, 2007 05:40 PM

Obviously, MLB doesn't care about what the fans think. No strike zone!!! I guess they don't want to show up some of those worthless umpires that should have retired years ago.

Posted by: jlf001@sbcglob | September 10, 2007 08:05 PM

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO THE STRIK ZONE? UMPIRES UNION COMPLAIN ABOUT IT MAKING THEM LOOK BAD FOR MAKING BAD CALLS?

Posted by: synapses11@yahoo | September 12, 2007 08:05 PM

(Gameday)

I altered the e-mail addresses to help foil spam and omitted posts that stuck to the original subject.

It seems very hard to escape the conclusions advocated by these fans. MLB did not want fans using Gameday to second-guess the umpires.

The funny part is that they made the move unannounced. I'd like to see the fuss persist until MLB addresses the issue.

This guy helped get rid of the GameDay strike zone

The first two pitches were, by Mr. MLB Gameday Operator’s standards, off the plate. (Full screencapturery is also available.) Not borderline. Not justbarelytouching the strike zone. You could put Leyland’s Marlboros between the outside edge and the pitch location. It’s not like the home plate umpire was Enrico Palazzo.
(The Futon Report)

This is before I took note of at-bats by Johnny Damon and Melvin Mora, so for anyone who thinks it's my fault ...

More on the MLB "GameDay" strike zone

In a post here, I wrote about the sudden disappearance of the strike zone on the Gameday feature provided online by Major League Baseball.

The main view of the pitching "action" dropped its graphic representation of the strike zone area. Probably it served to embarrass the league to some extent because sometimes a pitch well inside the box would be called a ball, and a pitch well outside the box would be called a strike.

I had taken note of two such instances recently.

It's not that easy for MLB to get rid of the strike zone on GameDay, however. I'll recycle the graphic from the Rays' ninth-inning comeback victory against Toronto in order to illustrate:

Near the top of the graphic, note the photos and information for Jeremy Accardo and B. J. Upton. Just below, note the horizontal bar just underneath. Under Accardo, you'll note five rectangular boxes--the strike zone with pitch locations for the last five hitters Accardo faced.

Likewise, under Upton you see the position relative to the rectangular strike zone of the pitch he knocked over the fence.



Moving in for the closer view revealed another way in which MLB has moved to cover the tracks of erring umpires. In times past, the log of pitches was color-coded for a graphic such as the once above. In other words, the dot near the bottom of the strike-zone box would be blue, just as it is in the full graphic above (the larger frame that shows the right-handed batter and the path of the pitch).

MLB can't get rid of the evidence completely without entirely eliminating the pitch history under the player photos. Until then, it will remain possible to reconstruct--with a bit of effort--the pitch locations and how they were called by the plate umpire.

Is it worth this much trouble, Major League Baseball? Are the umpires being that whiny about it?

For what it's worth, umpires, I don't pretend I could do the job better than you do. I'd let my attention wander, a pitch would come through and I'd be like "Uh, sorry, missed that one. Could you do it over again?"
Technology lets us look over your shoulder, and it's going to show us when you screw up.

Something's gone missing (Updated)

Was the technology a little too good?
Last week, I posted about the Devil Rays' win over the New York Yankees, and I added a bit of commentary about the "Gameday" graphic as it applied to Johnny Damon's ninth inning at-bat. I used a saved image from the "Gameday" graphic, which showed a pitch called a strike where the pitch looked like it was right over the heart of the plate--but I admitted that I had no idea whether or not the graphic corresponded closely to reality.

After the Rays beat Baltimore earlier this week, I posted a similar graphic showing how Melvin Mora was called out on a pitch that was too high to fit the strike zone. At that time, I noted that the graphic represented the situation reasonably well (if anything, the pitch was less a strike than it appeared on the graphic).

Something changed this week.


This is the graphic I clipped to show how Mora was unfairly called out on strikes.


This is a graphic I clipped tonight. See what's missing?

That's right--no more strike zone. I visited most of the other games for which a Gameday version was available, and none of them show a box representing the strike zone any longer.

That, I think, is Major League Baseball covering for its umpires.

Update: The before-and-after comparison makes clear another change that I noted later.
The top of the graphic has a mugshot of the pitcher opposite a mugshot of the batter. Below those photos and the accompanying statistics you see a horizontal space with a black background showing the location and number of pitches during previous at-bats. Note that in the more recent screenshot the pitches no longer show in color, making it tougher to figure out which pitches were called strikes and which were not. Sneaky, MLB! The umps must be giving you some grief over Gameday, eh?