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There's been a development out of Japan that makes our obsession with performance-enhancing drugs seem pretty silly. A professor at the University of Tokyo has created a pair of baseball-playing robots whose performance puts the greatest human players to shame. The pitcher-bot throws 90 percent of its pitches in the strike zone. Not that would help against the hitter-bot, which will never swing at any pitch out of the strike zone and makes contact with almost 100 percent of pitches in the zone. Finally, we'll hear the end of complaints about how quickly baseball games end!
For those of you who fear that the coming robot invasion may be an omen that the human race is obsolete, there are some caveats. The pitcher can only throw a ball 25 miles an hour and isn't capable of throwing breaking stuff, while the batter can't go the opposite way. A human hitter or pitcher could probably make either robot look foolish, at least until professor Masatoshi Ishikawa can correct those problems.
The creator claims that the robotic pitcher never gets tired, but let's let Joe Torre have a crack at it over a 162-game season before we take that to the bank. There's a good chance that come August the robot is visiting Dr. James Andrews. While Torre would love one of these, Tony La Russa is probably in the Sarah Connor camp when it comes to robots. Why make four pitching changes in an inning if the pitcher is incapable of determing what side of the plate his opposition is on?
On a more serious note, what if this technology was adapted for calling balls and strikes? Human players are doing just fine, but umpbots would be a good way to make for a more consistent game. If you threw a laser on the robot's head, it would also make arguments at home plate a lot more entertaining.
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