Jason Smith and Monse Balanos discuss whether or not robot umpires will be good for the game of baseball. Jason is ready for players to start arguing with robots, while Monse is going to miss the human element of the game and the arguments between players and managers and umpires.
Jason Smith:
"We have the technology to make this work so why not use it? Right? Clearly there's some pitches that are bigger deals than others. I can't imagine that some company has a technology, you can buy these tires for your care and you'll never have to buy tires again. We can make these tires work for your car and you'll never have to buy tires again. It's very expensive but you'll never have to buy a tire again. Can you imagine having that and say yeah we can do that but we're not going to use it. I like it. It's also going to help ease the tensions that are out there between the batters and the pitchers and the umpire. Because if a call is made that's bad, now at least players know if its a bad call I can go challenge it."
Monse Balanos:
"I'm gonna speak emotionally. I know we're headed in this direction, but come on man, we're gonna miss all of those angry moments of Aaron Boone getting ejected or how a month ago we saw Manny Machado get thrown out on the umpire's camera and him yelling at him because it was the wrong call. We're gonna miss that. I'm gonna miss that."
Jason Smith:
"I don't know I really wanna see the players try to argue with the computer. They go off the field, they shake the mouse to wake the computer up and they're typing in it wasn't a strike."
Monse Balanos:
"We're not gonna see them getting in the umpires faces anymore or coaches running out of the dugout. An again, I know I'm being illogical and why I don't want this to keep moving forward because it's gonna move forward and I don't know if we'll completely get rid of the human element, the human error element of baseball but I'm really just gonna miss the hotheadedness because it's gonna take that away."