Otto von Ballpark

Yes, I've read this from you. It's obviously an option. Whether it's the best option is subjective. I, for one, don't feel like human umpires detract from my enjoyment of playing or watching baseball. So I don't really admit that human umpires are an inferior option. And I would find it more interesting to see how good human umpires can get, as opposed to seeing what MLB players can do playing within robo-ump parameters.

Offering to trade surplus players in mid-April is a pretty poor/unrealistic way to acquire talent. Which is why maybe signing a free agent isn't always a bad alternative.

Does Celestino, at this point, offer any meaningful insurance for that outcome above Baddoo and Ubina? Not to mention, any other players we might draft/sign/acquire/develop in the next 4 years? If Pressly doesn't regress significantly very soon, it will be a costly loss, even if the prospects may help make up for it later. Edit: also, it makes no sense to notably weaken the team during Buxton's prime, to collect another low-odds potential replacement in case Buxton leaves in 4 years. (Obviously the actual trade also included Alcala, who at least has a bit better timeline than what you've offered for Celestino.)

Graterol needs a 40-man roster spot by November 2019 anyway. But he also has a max of 102 IP so far. I'm guessing he is capped at 140 this year, which would make it hard to span 3 levels and pitch through September, unless he misses some time midseason or comes up for bullpen duty. Alcala and Jax also need 40-man spots by November and are 3-4 years older, although their max innings so far aren't much higher than Graterol's (109.1 and 108.2, respectively).

Obviously I wasn't predicting a Cy! But to be fair to Alcala, he's an international signee who didn't sign until he was 19. Given that, his timeline seems reasonable.

Actually, it was more like a 2/17.5 extension for 2020-2021, after his $2.9 mil arb salary for 2019. (Plus a team/vesting option year in 2022 at $7-10 mil) I suspect that extension wouldn't have been immediately available to the Twins -- Pressly is a Texas native, and the Astros are just generally a more attractive destination for players right now. But the one year, $2.9 mil deal would have been pretty valuable on its own.

The line isn't that long right now! De Jong and Vasquez are still ineligible to return. Magill and Moya just started rehab. Reed is still out, as is Gonsalves. The only 40-man options are Romero, Stewart, Littell, and Thorpe. Romero pitched 2 innings yesterday, just like Duffey. Thorpe and Littell appear to be Rochester's probable starters the next 2 games. Not sure what is up with Stewart, he hasn't appeared since April 9 and may not start until April 19.

From the game recap thread (seemed more appropriate going forward in this thread): This is easier said than done, for a variety of reasons. First of all, I don't think there are quite 7 or 8 teams who are willing to sell good assets quite yet. At least, not without demanding a premium comparable to what they could get in July if their asset improves and they can leverage multiple bidders. There's a reason most trades don't happen until July. And even then, I'm not sure there are many great bullpen assets on these teams -- which pen arm from the Royals, Marlins, and Orioles would you give up value for right now? Maybe Givens from BAL, if your scouts really like him? Try to get Anderson or Kinley back, contrary to what your own talent evaluators concluded very recently? There's not a lot of options on these bad teams. And even if you get past that, those Twins assets you list are not all that valuable at the moment either. May has only 2 years of team control left, so he has very little value to a rebuilding team. Mejia is a longer-term asset -- but he hasn't established much MLB value yet, and he's also out of options and is obviously near the edge of the roster right now. I suspect teams would try to leverage a way to acquire him cheaply, or just hope that the Twins are forced to move him in a roster crunch at some point. Larnach is closer to what it would take, I think, although as a corner player in the low minors, I suspect a lot of teams don't value him that highly, or at least they may think they already have comparable assets of their own. Another way to look at it: would any team trade a Ryan Pressly for these guys right now? I don't think so. So you're either going to get a lesser pitcher in return, in which case what's the point, or you're going to have to cough up something more like Alcala + Celestino, or wait.

Again, I don't agree with the overall post, but this line is an interesting way to look at it. At the very least, the Twins would have to seriously consider making that reverse trade today, which adds some doubt to whether we can ultimately "win" the trade.

I don't mean to pile on, but I too disagree with Chief here. The trade can't be definitively lost for the Twins this year. That said, I do think that some folks over-rate the ways in which the Twins could eventually win the trade. In general terms, the 2018 Twins had more ways to address their 2022 needs than their 2019 needs. Obviously that won't matter if Alcala becomes a Cy Young winner for us, but for a lot of other outcomes, even those outcomes that look superficially good for Alcala relative to Pressly, it could be a factor.

Except that rocks on the infield would be a safety concern, unlike issues with umpiring. And that there haven't been big rocks on the infield for most of MLB history. And that there's no special skill in taking big rocks off the infield, like there is in good umpiring. (And new technology can't train better rock removal in any meaningful way either.) And umpiring technology couldn't be applied over all levels of the game equally, like rock removal (insert joke about poor amateur field conditions here), thus separating the MLB game a bit more from its lower levels.

From the study: https://www.bu.edu/today/2019/mlb-umpires-strike-zone-accuracy/ Average was 9.21%, best was 7.28%, worst was 11.54%. Joe West was second-worst, at 11.43%. The study notes a general trend of worse error rates among longer-tenured umpires. Which could mean that new umpires are getting selected/trained better. Perhaps umpires could be promoted/relegated based on this performance?

How do people react here when they see one of these "errors" on a close pitch? I usually don't think much of it, I honestly can't tell the difference in real-time for pitches on the edge. If I'm really invested in a team or outcome, I might wince a little when a call goes against me, or let out a sigh of relief when a call goes for me. I guess those parts wouldn't change whether we have human umps or robo-umps. In terms of balls and strikes, I usually don't even notice the umps, much less feel that they are impeding the game. I generally only notice umps when other issues come up (rule interpretations, arguments), and often it's in a positive light -- they've got a tough, interesting job back there. Has anyone here ever tried umpiring? It's virtually impossible for most people. I was like Frank Drebin back there -- slow, unsure, highly questionable accuracy. I am actually very impressed that there are humans who only have a strict 9.21% (and improving!) error rate versus a machine at the highest level of the game. I think it's kind of cool that major league baseball not only incorporates the best player talent, but also the best umpire talent in this way -- especially now that we have technology to find and develop that umpiring talent even more. To the extent that errors/disagreements happen, I find it's interesting to watch for patterns and try to use those to my advantage, or help my teammates use those. (Or when I'm watching, hope that my team has the awareness to use those.) I pretty much never detect any anti-team or anti-player bias, so I kind of welcome the opportunity for me or my team to use the information to get ahead. At worst, I consider the human attempt to process this information as more interesting than simply wondering if a machine is calibrated to a particular player's strike zone correctly. I don't consider myself a traditionalist, but that's the game I've played and watched since I was a kid. At best, it feels kind of unnecessary to switch to robo-umps. I like getting the call right, but we've already used technology to create a new micro-game within baseball that never existed before -- around the challenge system of replay. Now, with robo-umps, we could potentially eliminate part of the game and definite skills that have been part of the game for virtually its entire history. I'm really not sure how I feel about that.

I didn't mean to imply that this bias was conscious. No MLB ump really thinks "eh, I called the last close one a strike, so I'll call this close one a ball", nor do they actually think "I'm calling this a strike because I want to go to dinner." But there's unconscious bias. It's like "tie goes to the runner". Everyone knows the concept, but it doesn't really exist -- not in the rulebook, not in umpire training, not in reality -- there's no such thing as a tie. (You may have to get down to fractions of a millisecond to see the difference, but no two separate events occur at the exact same time.) So, when a play at 1st is super close, to the point where human eyes can't discern the difference in real time, our brain unconsciously feeds us information that might favor one result over another. Same with really close pitches at the plate. And I don't really care about that bias, on those edge cases. Of course we should always keep trying to improve umpire performance, human or otherwise, but I think it would be worthwhile to know how many of these human "errors" are occurring around those edge cases in a study like this, more than just the raw error rate.

I don't think the Angels have sacrificed many good prospects, as much as they simply failed to sign/draft/develop good prospects in the first place.

This study has found the error rate has been dropping steadily and significantly over the last 10 years. I'd guess that is due to technology giving better training/feedback to the human umps. I'd be curious to see how good we could get it.

For some percentage of pitches, you won't be able to distinguish this result from the robot's.

It's the same kind of argument. 30 GMs passed on Gonzalez before he lowered his demands too.

The Pirates or any other team simply has to roster Burdi until May 25th (or longer, if he goes on the DL between now and then), and he can no longer be returned to the Twins. I'd say the odds are near 100% that he isn't returned. Edit: coke to Zoilo.

Not all bias is bad. Expanding the zone to hurry a game through bad weather, or in a blowout. Or if two pitches in a row come in right on the edge, is it really that bad if the ump splits the difference and calls the first one a ball and the second one a strike, even if the second one was still 2 microns off the plate? Also, this new system wouldn't eliminate bias. Most obviously, there would be bias in how the upper and lower bounds of the zone are calibrated for each hitter.

I mentioned that in my post upthread (and shared a link directly to the study) -- the 20% error rate is just on 2 strike pitches. The overall error rate is 9.21% on all called pitches.

Again, some percentage of those "misses" are edge cases, effectively just coin flips even if called by robots. Are "misses" that are undetectable to human eyes still "misses" that we should care about?

That wasn't the context of the discussion.

I don't know, that might be cutting it too fine. He's already missed the start of the season. If he doesn't sign until June, a team would really have to compress his ramping up period, and they'd carry a lot more uncertainty going into the trade deadline.