Baseball to introduce ‘robot umpires’, ‘pitch clocks’ starting next year
Robotic umpires and a pitch clock system are coming to the Korean Baseball Organization’s first division. “To provide fans with fairer and more exciting games, the KBO will introduce an automated ball judgment system and pitch clock system to the KBO League starting in the 2024 season,” the KBO announced on Monday.
In July, the KBO announced the “Level Up Project” for the league and national team and said it would consider introducing an automatic ball-strike system (ABS) and pitch clock system. Since then, we have been comprehensively analyzing the system, hardware, and the impact on the game when the league introduces it, and on the 18th, we held a board meeting to plan the introduction time to next season and build related facilities and systems.
ABS is a method in which a machine automatically determines whether a pitch is a ball or a strike and sends a signal to the umpire. It is called “robot umpiring” and is already in use in amateur competitions such as high school baseball. At the professional level, 카지노사이트킴 it has been piloted in the Futures League (second division) since 2020, and the KBO says it has achieved results such as improving the precision and consistency of ball-strike calls and reducing the time it takes for the results to reach the umpire. “All pitchers and batters will be subject to the same strike zone judgment, making for a fairer game,” the KBO said.
The pitch clock is a system that requires pitchers to pitch within a certain amount of time to shorten the game time. It is currently implemented in Major League Baseball in the United States. The KBO has analyzed the average pitch interval of all pitchers in the league, as well as detailed metrics such as the average number of strike attempts and when batters are ready to hit. As a result, we have concluded that the pitch clock is suitable for the KBO, and we are considering the details of implementation.
