Major League Baseball wants to deploy strike zone robo-umpires in 2024

Major League Baseball will “likely” introduce an Automated Strike Zone System starting in 2024, commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN. The so-called robot umpires may call all balls and strikes then relay the information to a plate umpire, or be part of a replay review system that allows managers to challenge calls. “We have an automated strike zone system that works,” Manfred said. 

The comments come in the wake of fan outrage over umpire’s missed calls in recent games, including a brutal low strike error during a Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins tilt. “Enough is enough. Give me robo umps already,” tweeted Grand Rapids ABC sports director Jamal Spencer. 

MLB has been experimenting with robo umps in minor league Atlantic Triple-A league since 2019. It uses a doppler radar system developed by TrackMan, best known for its golf speed measurement devices. The system works thusly, according to CBS: “Pitch gets thrown, TrackMan tracks and identifies the pitch’s location, phone tells umpire whether it’s a ball or strike, umpire physically makes the call behind the plate.” 

In fairness to umpires, calling balls and strikes with 100 MPH fastballs and hard-breaking curveballs caught outside the zone is no easy feat. But that’s exactly why fans, pundits and the league itself thinks that machines should take the job, leaving the plate umpire to judge tags and other more subjective plays. Mechanical systems also made Atlantic league games mercifully shorter by a full nine minutes, according to MLB data. 

Under baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement, the league has the right to change rules unilaterally, provided it gives the union a season’s notice. Manfred already said that such a system wouldn’t be brought in next year, as the new competition committee won’t have its first meeting until 2023. Once it does meet, though, the committee is very likely to approve the changes since it’s dominated by ownership, according to ESPN. 

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Unity lays off 4 percent of its workforce to realign its resources

Unity has laid off hundreds of employees in its offices across the globe, according to Kotaku. The video game software development company known for its popular game engine has reportedly let around 300 to 400 staffers go so far. Layoffs are still ongoing, sources said, so those numbers may be higher by the time the company is done. Unity has confirmed to Engadget that it’s “realigning some of [its] resources,” which has led to the dismissal of approximately 4 percent of its entire workforce. That’s consistent with the report that it has let around 300 people go, since its LinkedIn page lists 8,048 employees.

The company told Engadget:

“As part of a continued planning process where we regularly assess our resourcing levels against our company priorities, we decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth. This resulted in some hard decisions that impacted approximately 4% of all Unity workforce. We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Unity and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.”

While the mass dismissal affects Unity’s entire workforce, Kotaku said it’s mostly concentrated on its AI and engineering divisions. On Blind, the anonymous messaging board used by workers in the tech industry, posters claiming to be former Unity employees said they were asked to hop on a Zoom call with a manager and an HR personnel. They lost access to their company Slack and email and had to surrender their laptops within 48 hours, but they were apparently given 30 days to find a new role within the company. According to Kotaku, giving them 30 days to find a new role wouldn’t help because the company has instituted a hiring freeze, but Unity told us that’s not true at all. 

One of the publication’s sources said there’s a lot going on within Unity at the moment, including mismanagement and “strategic pivots at a rapid, unpredictable rate.” Whatever the reason is for its reorganization, Unity’s layoffs are just the latest in a string of job cuts across the tech industry. Niantic also recently laid off around 90 employees, or 8 percent of its workforce, to streamline its operations. Meanwhile, Netflix’s latest round of job cuts due to slowing revenue growth had affected 300 staff members.