The Strike Zone - I hate East German Ice Skaters

One of my favorite writers over at Giants watch, Steve Harmon was recapping the ambush of Matt Cain by the homeplate umpires' wandering, kaleidoscopic strike zone. Two innings of bad strike calls that could very well be the difference between a 1 game lead and a 3 game lead over Arizona.  And I got to thinking about the strike zone and some of the lore that surrounds it. This posted as a comment but was a little long to be a comment so its reposted with some editing here

Umpire strike zones have a disproportionate and inappropriate impact on game outcomes. You cited several questionable calls in just two innings that probably dictated the final results.

Much of baseball lore emanates from the bottom of the cliche bin, and the following makes me want to break large pieces of furniture.

"Pitchers and hitters don't care what the strike zone is as long as it is consistent".

No! No! Helllllllll NOOOOOOOOO!

I believe the mindless repetition of this concept is something so harmful to the real integrity of the game as to be a canard of the highest order. Baseball is predicated upon a strike zone. Without a strikezone, baseball does not exist. So it seems to me that the best strike zone is the most accurate one, not a wrong one that is declared acceptable because somebody subjectively deems it to be "consistent".

What the game needs and is entitled to is a strike zone as it is written in the rulebook without impeding the flow of the game such as the use of instant replay. The means to do this electronically and visually have been in place and available to TV viewers for years.

The process is simple. Add an electronic voice to the process and run it into the homeplate umpires' ear bud. Run it through an ipod if need be for goodness sakes. This simple process removes the single biggest flaw in sports officiating; the inevitable disasters that turn a game around because of bad strike zone calls.

What the rulebook clearly spells out to be an objective measurement (the strike zone) has been relegated to the same subjective judgment methods as ice dancing competitions. The only thing baseball is missing are the three  East German judges.

And unlike replay, the game never misses a beat with the aural-prompted strikezone. It is invisible to fan and player alike, and makes for 99.999 percent accuracy, allowing for the inevitable equipment failures along the way.

A collateral benefit would be the re-training of the eye by the electronic strike zone, so in the event of equipment failure, the ump's strike zone would have been retooled so that his strike zone would more likely replicate the electronic one.

It makes the game fairer, by far. And if there was ever a game that is meant to be measured objectively, it is baseball. Because it is in fact a game of inches, fairness demands as much accuracy as possible.

There is nothing fair about bad strike zone calls at all. Bad strike zones ruin innings, ruin games, ruin seasons, ruin careers. I see nothing endearing, whatsoever in any of that.

More tension and animosity have been created by bad strike zone calls than any other fixable officiating deficiency that I can recall. If you have your own favorite, speak up and we can debate it.

Refusing to change is not maintaining tradition. Using a rusty scalpel to render living flesh under General Anesthesia is not tradition either, particularly when arthroscopic surgery with a local is indicated.

And after far too many bad strike zone calls, I sometimes feel like I've been put under by General Anesthesia.