Mike Schmidt says umpires should not call balls and strikes

Usually, when a baseball star of yesteryear talks about technology in the game, it’s to decry it. Mike Schmidt is not your usual baseball star of yesteryear. As he told 97.5 The Fanatic today, he thinks umpires should get out of the balls and strikes business:

“I think the umpire at home plate should not call balls and strikes. I think they should have a force field over home plate and if the pitcher throws and the ball touches the force field a little bell goes off and it’s a strike . . . we’re going to see at some time – my guess is within the next 10 years – that you’ll see the balls and strikes being treated just like they treat the line calls in tennis. You’d think it would be something very easy to do with what they can do electronically in our world today.”

I think he’s right about that. Not about “force fields,” because that’s not what they are (and his use of that term is adorable) but using some variation of the QuesTec/Pitch/FX technology to actually call balls and strikes seems like an inevitability to me. The only issue now is speed, as there is, I am told a small but significant enough delay between pitches and the actual register of the pitch that it could cause problems to the flow of the game.

But that’s the sort of thing that’ll get fixed soon, if it isn’t already being addressed. Then Mike Schmidt will get to see his force fields.