Baseball has hardly changed from the simple game that Alexander Cartwright fathered in 1845 — and while that lack of change has made baseball a unifier that transcends race, generation, and more, it also means baseball has its fair share of archaic moments. Nowhere are these moments more glaring than in baseball’s slow pace, and in its imperfections regarding the notoriously human nature of umpires.
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In attempting to solve these issues, baseball has plunged head-first into the world of technology, and clearly has no intention of coming back up to the proverbial surface. Not all baseball tech is geared towards speeding up the game and making it more objective — the wearables that MLB players are allowed to use during games are purely for limiting injuries, and other notable products are meant to augment performance. But baseball is definitely looking to technology to cure its prominent ailments, with such things as pitch clocks proposed to limit the time between pitches and increase pace-of-game, and the idea of robot umpires to make ball-strike calls entirely objective. Are these suggested solutions really good for baseball, though?
Pace-of-game is a double-edged sword because while increasing it inherently makes baseball less “boring,” decreasing the interval between pitches causes even more harm to pitchers who already throw the ball around 100 times on a regular basis. A recent report by McMaster University proved that shortened time between pitches unsurprisingly raises the risk a pitcher suffering an arm injury. This is particularly troubling, given that pitchers are already being injured at an alarming rate: 29 pitchers had Tommy John surgery during the 2015 season, and already nine have gone under the knife in 2016. And on top of the injury toll that pace-of-game changes should inevitably have, they don’t even seem to be working in the first place — as ESPN’s Jayson Stark reported, games are actually longer this year than they were last year.
Making baseball a more objective sport is a different issue entirely, and itself has as much to do with personal opinions as it does with the implementation of technology. MLB’s first massive step towards decreasing subjectivity (instituting instant replay) has, unfortunately, also caused a decrease in pace-of-game, and has received mostly negative reviews since its inauguration in 2014. And not everyone agrees that replay even has a place in baseball to start — part of the beauty in baseball is that some of its most important decisions are made via instantaneous observations by the naked eye. Furthermore, while the introduction of robot umpires would certainly increase both pace-of-game and objectivity in baseball, it would rid baseball of one of its most important aspects, as home-plate umpires signify much more than simple pitch calls in one of America’s oldest sports.
Baseball’s issues are not easily solvable, if solvable at all. Forcing pitchers to throw pitches in quicker succession speeds up games, but does more physical harm than mental good. Instant replay makes baseball a more credible game, but consistently slows it down more than anyone cares to deal with. Alas, it is refreshing to see MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and his crew using technology to make baseball the best it can be, even if each solution creates another problem to be addressed.