The engineered strike zone is coming along as fast as many of the slow-moving changes have in recent years for Major League Baseball. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss umpires, spring training strike zones and getting the balls and strikes right in MLB as the game is on the cusp of being revolutionized with technology settling the scores – and the bets.
Nestor Aparicio and Luke Jones discussed the upcoming baseball season, focusing on the new automated ball-strike challenge system being tested during spring training. The system, using HawkEye technology, allows players to challenge umpire calls and aims to improve accuracy. Luke noted that 60% of spring training games are using this system, adding an average of 17 seconds per challenge. They also discussed the potential long-term impact of this technology on umpires and the game’s dynamics. Nestor emphasized the importance of seeing the strike zone clearly from the stands, reminiscing about his experiences at various stadiums.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
crab melt, baseball season, strike zone, automated system, umpire challenges, spring training, HawkEye technology, pitch clock, player safety, game evolution, strike zone accuracy, fan complaints, umpire respect, pitching injuries, sports medicine
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 towns in Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. I have the magic eight ball Maryland lottery tickets that I will be giving out on this side at fade Lee’s on March the sixth. It’s not baseball season yet, but we’re getting really, really close. We’re gonna be talking a lot of baseball in this segment. We are gonna be at fade leads on various days, beginning on April the second. We’re also gonna be Cocos on April 30, doing a big thing, Luke. I gotta ask you this a little plug for Cocos here while I’m wearing a fadley shirt and talking about things. But if I say to you, I had a crab melt at a diner a place. I mean, your family was from Essex and whatnot. Have you ever had a crab melt in the way that maybe you’ve ordered a tuna melt or a patty melt, which would be more like a hamburger salisbury steak, does it? It’s more like dineries a melt. Yeah, if I say crab melt, does that mean anything to you?
Luke Jones 00:59
I’ve, I’ve done it before. I’m trying to think where I had one. It was good, but I can’t remember exactly where I had one. But yes, I’ve had one before. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 01:09
I made the guys at Costas make them for me a couple years ago because we got into this. But I have learned that Coco’s where you carry out the crab cake on the way, and you could take it home, and you can do that if they lose any of our people who support us. We love them all. Go eat them all. Don’t ask me, which one’s the best. Go eat them all, and you’ll find out they’re all freaking great, and they’re all different. And that you’ll know why. I can’t say, Well, this is better to just get them all. So I the Coco’s crab cake specifically, is gigantic. Everybody knows that. I bring it home. It’s big softball. And I have been, I told Marcello this putting the crab melt together from Burke’s, which was my favorite. It’s where we drank beer when I was too young. All the sports writers gathered at the news, American at the sun. It’s where I cried to Jack Gibbons when I left the sun and went out on my own. It’s where Steadman it’s where my goodbye party was. It’s where we’re sick. Brought down the art. We had crab melts, onion rings. And this is before Mick Ultra went Ultra. It was just proper Michelob blight. And it was in a frosted goblet, one of those ones you look through. And they used to do comedy upstairs, or Mickey Coachella and whatnot. But Burkes was legendary. They had a crab melt. And we’re bringing it back to life one night only. She might do it two nights. You know, she does a burger night over there on Tuesday, and she her burger was a chicken thing last week and like that. Ain’t a burger. If you could do that, we could do a crap melt. So on April the 30th, which is the 48th anniversary of Bruno Sammartino losing the worldwide Wrestling Federation championship, and superstar cheated. We all know that the video evidence speaks for itself. Um, that on April the 30th, the Yankees play the Orioles at Camden Yards. You won’t be there. You might come by early in the show, but you’re going to be at the game because the Yankees are in town, and we’re going to have a proper crab melt night. That night, I’ll make sure you get one at lunch, but they’re going to make proper crab melt, which is your English muffin, your crab meat Imperial, however you do it, but you don’t do any of that crab paste, um, that poop on a shingle that they put on, on pretzels. No, no, I’m talking crab meat. Meat, not mush. And so you get the crab meat and then extra sharp cheddar cheese on an English muffin, and you toast it just so it’s perfect, and you serve it with coleslaw and fries, or if you have onion rings, nobody has Burke’s onion rings anymore. So we’re doing this April 30, because it’s baseball season. By the time this happens, we’ll find out about the Sugano fellow and the Charlie Morton’s and we’ll have a couple of weeks under our belt. You and I have talked at length about the team and the games and all that. Luke, I want to, like, bring you in so you’re gonna have a proper crap melt on April 30 with everybody else. I’ll bring my program from that night when Bruno superstar Graham took the belt. But baseball and the year and I had the strangest text from our pal, Chris foreign, who runs the Towson torch. You know about the newsletter here, big baseball guy, New England guy, sent me a text the other night, and I told him, don’t text me about baseball. But he did anyway. And he said, Well, what’s this pitch strike to the spring train? And I’m like, Yeah, I remember they measured all the players, and the players were pissed off and trying to get an extra half inch. And I don’t know what my dude down in Houston is going to do to cheat. He’s five foot four, whatever he is, Freddy Patek, my Venezuelan brother, cheating. They should take the World Championship away from them. I take the belt off them, as they would say. But for me, with baseball season, it’s new games, new rules. I mean, we’ve changed the game a lot in a couple of years. We really have from pitchers and what left handed pitching does. They’ve even moved the fence in again. So there are things to discuss that aren’t just will Adley rutschman hit? Did they spend enough money on pitching? And I wanted to have a little oxygen with you to talk about the nerdy that you love about base. Ball. Yeah.
Luke Jones 05:00
I mean, this is just a spring training thing, just to be clear, but baseball testing out the automated ball Strike Challenge system during spring training games. It’s not in every single ballpark, but I think I saw the breakdown in terms of the number of ballparks it’s in, in Florida and Arizona, think it equated to the there would be, you know, roughly 60% of spring training games that are going to be testing this out. And, you know, I think, I think we certainly shouldn’t be surprised. We know the technology has been trending this way. We know that it’s been used in minor league baseball at least somewhat. And we’re going to see how this goes, you know, over the weekend, as the Orioles, you know, they, they played at Ed Smith Stadium on Saturday. That is not one of the ballparks that has the, you know, what? HawkEye system, I guess it is the same. It’s the same thing they use in tennis. You know, this is, you know, technology that will bring the strike zone into a very clear focus, in terms of
Nestor Aparicio 06:09
football, into a first down focus. You think, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Luke Jones 06:13
putting the chip in the ball and the spot and all that. But, you know, this is the next step. I don’t know if it necessarily means we’ll definitely see it next year, but we’re going in this direction. It’s an ABS system. There are challenges in these spring training games where the technology is at the ballpark, each team gets two challenges. The system is unique in the way that this is not like the NFL, where the head coach throws the red challenge flag. There are three individuals who can challenge the pitcher, the catcher or the hitter at the plate. It cannot be from a coach in the dugout or anyone else on the field. They challenge it must be immediate after the umpires ball or strike call. They the player taps their cap or their helmet to alert the umpire they want to challenge it. If they do the HawkEye system, you know, you see it. It comes up on the scoreboard at the basically gives the middle finger to the home plate on fire base, kinda or, or the flip side of it is the home plate umpire. Can kind of say, See, I told you back
Nestor Aparicio 07:23
in a box, yes.
Luke Jones 07:26
And I watched, all of a sudden, we heard little league. I mean, I watched, what was it? It was the, I think was the Dodgers and the Cubs on Thursday or Friday, because, remember, they’re playing, you know, they’re, they’re playing an international series, so they started a little bit early, but I actually saw the first few challenges. I saw the umpire was right. So, you know, it will either validate the umpire or make the umpire look bad. But the point with this is it’s a challenge system. It’s a limited scope. I think, you know, the minor leagues has been doing this. You know, from what I understand, the the data that’s been collected, where it’s been experimented with minor league games, a challenge added an app, you know, an average of 17 seconds to the game. So it’s not as though this is what we see with the NFL. Sometimes, when there’s a challenge, they go to a commercial, come back, they’re still looking at it. At some point you’re like, all right, this isn’t indisputable evidence. What are we doing here? The call should stand. We’ve all been there, right? We’ve all sat there for five minutes for some of those calls. So this is a very expedited process, and, you know, it’s a step towards what I assume at some point, whether it’s next year, two years from now, five years from now, the next CBA with the umpires union in terms of eventually having a fully automated system. But this is at least the first step in the process of having more accountability. And again, it will either to your point, either be a middle finger to the umpires, or it will be validation that, hey, maybe these guys aren’t quite as bad as as we say they are all the time. Or it’ll be a case of, hey, that umpire is having an off night. You know? Maybe it’s a day game and the lighting is, you know, the it’s a tough Sun game, tough sky game. There’s a glare, whatever. But it is an effort to get the calls right, if it can be done in a way that is not going to fundamentally change the game in terms of slowing things down, really dragging from a pace standpoint, in the same way that when the pitch timer was introduced a couple years ago, I think plenty of old school fans had concerns about what that would look like. I think it’s been overwhelmingly positive in terms of shaving so much of that dead air time away from the game, right? So, you know, I think in the same way that, you know, it’s not as though, like we’re going to have a robot behind the catcher, right in the. And the umpire is going to be replaced. The umpire has some assistance now, right? And, and players have a have an ability to challenge this. So, you know, it’s interesting. I was listening to, I it was MLB on network radio, on Sirius XM over the weekend, and Tito Francona, of course, is back, you know, managing the Cincinnati Reds, they that actually instructed their major league players that he doesn’t want them challenging this spring, because they’re not going to be doing it in the regular season. So he kind of wants them just to be kind of tunnel vision on what they’re doing, trying to get ready for the season. But on
Nestor Aparicio 10:35
every pitch, there will be a measurement, right? The umpires getting a report card at the end, either way. So, oh,
Luke Jones 10:39
sure, yeah. And that’s been there. I mean, that’s been there, right? I mean, that that’s, that’s so TV’s gonna know that they missed the call on the on the thing, and they’re gonna say that should have been a ball, because if that’s going on, it’s gonna make the broadcast even more interesting. Well, I mean, because this is coming, right? They’re not doing this to fart around. They’re doing this to install it to me, it’s gonna be clock and everything else. What? Exactly? Yeah, what exactly is it gonna look like? I mean, the reality is, K zone has been part of broadcast for years now, right? We’ve seen the box on, you know, whether that, you know that that isn’t the official HawkEye system that they’re going to be using for these challenges, but it’s, it’s along the same lines, right? And, you know, you, you, you made a real you brought one of the more interesting people are betting on this dude. I’m just saying, oh, you know what I mean, like, it’s, well, if you bet on spring training baseball, you’re just insane. But, but you know in terms of where we’re going long, long term in the big picture? Yes, of course. But I think one of the more interesting elements of this system, and you alluded to it, is the big question with an automated strike zone has always been, how do you prevent players from gaming the system? You know this, a strike zone is not like a football field where it’s not like the 90 feet in between the bases, right? Well, squat, right? Exactly, exactly. We can all remember Ricky Henderson hitting from, uh, you know, a deep crouch
Nestor Aparicio 12:01
was five feet tall when he bent over right and that. And
Luke Jones 12:05
then you had your other guys, like a Richie Sexton, who, that guy was a monster. And, you know, stood up relatively straight, and his strike zone was was huge. So what they have decided to do is, and you alluded to it, they have measured these players in terms of just their height, right, their height standing up straight. And they’ve based it off of that. So, you know that. So that, okay, you can try to manipulate. You can try to choose. You could try to right, you could try to game the system, if you think you’re going to do that, but they’ve grown longer hair, yeah? So, so, you know, and that that was always one of the questions here, because Cal Ripken, we, we all fondly remember Cal would sometimes go through two or three batting stances in a single game. I mean, that’s internet. Cal was right, exactly. So, so, you know, there’s always been that question, but that that is how they, at least in the here and now, as they’re doing this on a trial basis, that is how they are accounting for that. So, you know, I think it’s gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. I don’t think we’re necessarily going to have any definitive conclusion to draw from the end of spring training, but as is the case with any time you’re going to implement it, implement a change, you need to collect data, and this is going to give them a bunch of data points to go off of to then ponder, okay, what’s the next step? Will it be to introduce this system next year? Will it be, hey, we have to table it, because this system still is not ready for prime time yet, you know, because we still ran into a lot of problems, because part of this is always as much as much as people have talked about the human element, and I almost feel like that has a negative connotation at this point in time. However, we all have been at a baseball game when it’s 15 to one in the ninth inning, right? What is the umpire generally done with the strike zone at that point in time when it’s 15 and 115, to one, generally, they become a little more liberal. They expand the zone a little bit. You’re trying to get the game over with. And you have that if you have an automated system that’s no longer in play, a strike is a strike, and a ball is a ball for all nine innings, whether it’s two to one or 20 to one. So, and I don’t let me be clear, I’m not saying that as an argument to not do automation in a big picture sense. But these are the kind of things we have to think about in terms of, whenever you have a system like this, unintended consequences. We talked about this a lot with the when the challenge system was first introduced. Remember pop up slides? Right? That was a big thing. Pop Up slides, where a batter, if you slowed it down, frame by frame by frame and super slow motion, a batter was or the base runner was technically coming off the bag. In the spirit of the rule of Major League Baseball or Little League Baseball, for that matter, you weren’t coming off the bag. But when you have technology now. That is looking at these things and slowing it down frame by frame, you might have some unintended consequences. We talked about this with the neighborhood rule on double plays at second base, where that’s something that’s been in place to basically keep infielders safe, right? You know, to basically avoid these collisions. By the
Nestor Aparicio 15:18
way, I saw the Chase Utley thing again, and I and Ripken that night. It was me ripping cow. Quite frankly, I mentioned it to him next time I see him, but he was on television that night and would refuse to call that a dirty slide. And I’m thinking to myself, like that was one of the dirtiest things I’ve ever seen in baseball. Like I I just thought it was absolutely for Chase Utley, whatever my friend’s dog’s name’s Chase, um, you know, and I’m not a Philly hater in any way. I just like, that’s one of those plays that I look back my dad talked about the ray Fauci play, wasn’t he when that happened? Yeah, but I think of him to Philly, yeah, sure. Go ahead, as far as a play goes, of all of the crazy things that have had in baseball, from the Juan Marisol and throw guys throwing balls and Roseboro and crazy stuff that have happened in games and fights and brawls and, you know, Pedro Martinez punching Don Zimmer. And it just crazy stuff that’s ever happened, you know, I put that on a player safety level, and things that happen at home plate, right? Home Plate, second place, taking out players, breaking legs in the middle of games. I I’ve never I felt like baseball should have more sportsmanship than that, and I’ve often played and you know the meatheads I talk about with the cheese and the head hunting and retaliation and the Messina fight and hassle men, and I mean, I have so much history of baseball and all of that. I anything that makes it more on the up and up, and makes it more, less of that and more of play the game. Play the game. Don’t bullshit me. Later on, when you slid in the center field, broke a guy’s leg,
Luke Jones 16:53
I understood. I’m not saying I like that stuff, but you go back and look in the 70s, I mean, the Yankees and the Royals had something very similar to that happened. Oh my god,
Nestor Aparicio 17:01
the Greg nettle staying at the right, exactly. So he’s fights so much
Luke Jones 17:05
of this is just evolution, right? And we’ve talked about this with the Ravens. Go back and look at go, look at highlights of the 2000 ravens defense. And how many of those phase would be penalized in 2025 right?
Nestor Aparicio 17:16
I mean, lacco said the same thing when Flacco came on this month. He talked, he’s like, the game has changed. Oh,
Luke Jones 17:21
it’s just a lot, yeah. I mean, even from like, the beginning of his career, which, you know, that was 2008 2000
Nestor Aparicio 17:27
he mentioned
Luke Jones 17:29
he did, yeah, yeah. So, so there’s, so there’s some of that. But, you know, a lot of this is just, you know, the game is evolving. Yeah, those elements are safety elements. But what I was talking about even just with challenge, with challenges and replay, and now talking about automation for the for balls and strikes, you know, it’s evolving. And look, there are ways that that’s great, and as I said, there can also be unintended consequences. And the way that we, we saw some of that with, you know, a guy technically coming off the bag on a pop up slide, even though the history and the spirit of baseball for 150 years would say, No, he didn’t come off the bag. What are you talking about? Right? So there are always those things to consider when you’re trying to figure all of this out, and that doesn’t mean you don’t do it, let’s be clear, but you do have to ponder, and that’s why you know, Will, Will we ever see full blown automation where the umpire basically just becomes someone that stands back there and has a beep go off in their earpiece? Or maybe they have, you know, an element of a virtual reality, you know, eye, eye piece that they wear, even that will show, hey, that was a strike. Put up your finger. It’s a strike. Hey, it was a ball. You just and you would still have the same esthetics, but they have a system that’s helping them call it so, you know, it’s gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. You know, as I said, some teams are into doing it, and other teams are gonna shy away. I mean, I watched the Orioles Phillies game on Sunday that was on NBC Sports, Philly MLB Network picked up that game. Sam basayo, the Orioles prospect catcher who’s in the miners and has some exposure to this, he was right on it. There was a pitch that was a strike. He framed it well. It absolutely was a strike. He tapped his helmet. The HawkEye system came up on the video board and it was overturned. It was a strike rather than a ball. So sometimes it’s as clear cut as that, and other times it’s going to be
Nestor Aparicio 19:25
and the young guys are going to have a vibe. But how many times a game can they do that there
Luke Jones 19:29
for right now, for what it is, it is two, and you have two incorrect challenges, right? So basically, if you keep getting it correct, you know, a team only loses its challenge. How long did it take them to adjudicate that? Three seconds, seconds. It’s quick, maybe not three seconds. So you
Nestor Aparicio 19:47
know, to me, you’re probably going to get two or three an inning when this is done. 10 years. 10 years now. Oh,
Luke Jones 19:54
10 years. Well, and that’s where we kind of go to me, that’s where we look at this and say. What do we really want to accomplish here? One
Nestor Aparicio 20:01
thing we want to get the strike zone right. That’s all we want to do. But we don’t
Luke Jones 20:05
want to we don’t want it to be five hours in the process of doing it. I understand that. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 20:09
what I’m saying when they adjudicate this. It’s not porno booth and pull the officials. Why fall New York all the inefficient things that we’ve seen done in other sports? Yeah,
Luke Jones 20:18
I think what to me, where you want to go, big picture with this is to go full automation. And the umpire has an earpiece and maybe a little camera inside his helmet. And obviously we’re talking virtual reality and different things like that. It comes a pin setter at the duck pin Exactly. He basically, hey, you hear a beep. You put up your hand for he’s responsible for handing the ball right, and they would still, you know, the umpire would still make calls at home plate. He would still listen for foul tips, all those different things that replay would assist, but he would still make calls, but balls and strikes the other thing, he still needs to have an ability to do it, because if the system goes down, you still have to call balls and strikes. So there’s always that element. So this is never, I think, what else in
Nestor Aparicio 21:05
the game could they not? I’m just trying to think in fuel fly rule box. I mean, how many of these things are in? Yeah, like to your point, fair or foul. I mean, you know, a lot of this is way more cut and dried. For two men here spent most of their lives, especially me, being a little older than you, in and around baseball and thinking based has never been a point in my life where I haven’t thought about baseball, thinking about it a different way, without umpires. And you know, as my dad would say, What good are you guys anyway, right? Still
Luke Jones 21:33
be there, I mean, and I think a lot of people, a lot of people have this, and I want to, I don’t want to be paint with too broad a stroke here. But what the human element? I think there’s a think there’s a fear to the game looking different right in the eighth, and the idea that, if we would say literally Robo ops, like you don’t want a literal robot behind the catcher, there’s still going to be an umpire there. But if you introduce automation, you can make that, that umpire’s job a much easier, and can’t
Nestor Aparicio 22:09
argue balls and strikes anymore. It’s just over well, and you
Luke Jones 22:13
can anyway, but yeah, especially then, right? So, so I, you know, I think a challenge system, to me, is the middle ground step to eventually get to the point where it’s fully automated. But even people that are way smarter than me about this, and you know, I’ve read about the ABS system and using it in the minors and all that, it’s still not a perfect system. Let’s be clear, there’s still elements to this that, you know, like I said, like we said, how do you handle batting stances, you know, is it the front of the plate? Is it, you know? How does it just have to clip the court, like all of those things, in terms of automation and technology, how exactly do you want the system to interpret a ball and a strike, right and and, as I said, there are hidden consequences to that in the way that if you have a 17 to one game in this in the sixth inning, that system is still going to call balls and strikes by the book, rather than, well, I get some pitching for crying out loud. Well, sure, but, but at the same time, we also know that pace of play has been a big bugaboo, right? That’s been a big sticking point for people. So you don’t want four and a half five hour games in those instances, but you want to get the calls right, and so I think, again, I don’t think, as you and I, if we reconvene in a month, after a month of this happening, that we’re necessarily going to have any definitive feelings on this one way or the other that would be different from how you and I talk about it now, but it’s kind of the next step in how do we get to a point where we can try to have a system that makes sense? Doesn’t eliminate the umpires entirely, but take some of that off their plate, get the calls right, do it just like that, to keep the pace of the game continuing to go at a level that they’ve found now with the pitch timer and the positives that that has brought into the game over the last couple years. And at the end of the end of the day, get it right and have it so people are happy about it. Or if they’re not happy about it, they have no right to complain, because, hey, Hawkeye said it was a strike. It was a strike. Or if it was a ball, as a ball. So, you know, I think, as is the case with any of these things, there’ll probably be some hiccups, and there’ll probably be some scenarios that you and I aren’t even thinking about right now that might arise in terms of, hey, oh, does the system account for this happening? But you know, when you have the technology, you want to be in a position where you can start to use it and start to implement it and start to make it be a positive change for the game. I think this is the right way to go. You know, to do this on a trial balloon basis that not every ballpark and spring training has at the moment, but enough of them will that okay? The Orioles won’t have it for their home games, but a big chunk of their road games, you know, you’ll get to be exposed to it a little bit more. What’s what’s interesting about it is a team like the Orioles, where they have so many young guys who were either, you know, coming up from the miners now or over the last couple years, you know, they’ve been exposed to this a little bit more than teams that are a little more veteran laden. So I don’t think it’s will amount to that big of an advantage once this ultimately becomes part of the regular season and the playoffs. But, you know, it’s, it’s an interesting wrinkle to throw in there, you know, like, like I said, Sam basio, he did it against the Phillies on Sunday. You know, it’s a pretty clear cut strike that the umpire missed. It happens, tapped on his helmet. They The HawkEye system came up. They saw that it was a strike. They changed the call. They moved on. You know, it’s very, very quick. You know, it, as I said, the minor league data, where they’ve used this and experimented with this a challenge ads, you know, on average about 15 to 17 seconds. You know, it’s not dramatic. And again, you have a system where you get two challenges, if you lose a challenge, then you know, you can’t keep doing it as you go, especially if you’re getting them wrong, if you’re getting them wrong. So you know, we’ll see how it plays out. I think it’s in I don’t think it’s like the overwhelming headline story of spring training, but I do think it’s interesting, and I think it’ll be interesting, it’ll be interesting to see just how accurate or inaccurate the umpires actually are, right? I mean, I I saw one of the first challenges I saw watching a game. I think it was last Friday. I can’t remember who it was. Might have been the Yankees raise. You know, the Yankees were hosting the rays at Steinbrenner field, where that’s going to be the home of the rays during the regular season, which was just funny, but
Nestor Aparicio 26:46
there was, I tried to take you down there next week for spring training. You didn’t want to hear anything. I got there was a period and all that. I know. There
Luke Jones 26:52
was a challenge I saw. I was just like, What the heck was that that’s not even close to a strikes. The Catcher was clueless on it, to the point where his his own manager was laughing at him. I don’t think, I actually don’t think it was that game. But point was, it was one of these games where someone challenged one that had no business challenge, challenging one. And if you talk about real games, if this eventually becomes part of the regular season, let alone the playoffs, and you have a challenge system rather than, rather than full automation, then you need to be deliberate about it in the same way that we all talk about. You know, John Harbaugh shouldn’t challenge something that amounts to four or five yards five minutes into the game, because the juice isn’t just isn’t worth the squeeze of using a challenge, right? That’s where you do need to be a little more tactical about it. But in the meantime, with spring training, you know, these teams are going to try it out, players are going to test it out, and kind of see, see what we come to and, you know, either it could either be embarrassing for the umpires, or it could be, hey, maybe we’ve been a little too hard on these guys, so which I think the truth is probably somewhere in between. So it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. But, you know, it’s not necessarily going to be a major, major story. And as I said, it’s not every single ballpark in the minor or in the spring training, because not all these parks they’ve implemented, implemented it where they play minor league baseball, right? So the Orioles, you know, just their Florida Coast team, or whatever they you know, they don’t have the HawkEye system at Ed Smith just yet.
Nestor Aparicio 28:23
Luke Jones is here. He it will be there. And we’re going to be watching all sorts of things. Trades free agency for the NFL, all of that. If you’re on W NST tech service, Orioles do anything somebody gets hurt. Weird stuff happens. We’ll be the first ones to let you know. He and I have been talking at length about things on the field. The segment has been more about the umpiring and more about where the future of the game is, which where I would bring this to you and say, you know you love your father. My dad’s birthday is coming up next week, on March 5, and I always honor Him on that day. And my dad’s been gone since 92 now. You lost your pop in. Oh four. Correct? Yes, oh four. So when I mean we’re talking 21 years for you, we’re talking 30, whatever years for, you know, my dad and I think about baseball being like, glacially slow to change anything where, if your father came back, other than the Washington Nationals, and there wouldn’t, you know what I mean, the A’s, I guess finally, the franchises would be the same. He would say, what’s going on with the pitching? And, you know, five man rotations itself, my dad would have a whole different look from earlier even than that. But my dad dying in 92 and your dad dying in oh four, the game had changed a whole lot during that dozen period, other than maybe the Miami Marlins and a couple of teams coming in. But I think about the game 10 years ago, where you and I were slogging through Manny Machado and Dan Duquette and all of that, and just thinking about everything they’ve done pretty quickly. By baseball standards, you to move things around quicker than Lou Pinella could get facial hair taken out of the Yankees clubhouse as an example of things that are absurd and ridiculous that are still like a part of all of this, the strike zone, gambling, um. Um, left handed pitching, pitch clock. Um, yeah, I’m trying to think of other things about the game. I mean, the shift, obviously one issue out
Luke Jones 30:09
right, and the subsequent, you know, the limiting of it, but it’s still part of the game.
Nestor Aparicio 30:14
Just your dad or my dad, my my dad was really a nerd. I’m assuming your dad was, because I’ve met you. Um, that the 68 high mound and low mound and the designated hitter. You know, my dad loved baseball because he loved SATs. My dad loved division and multiplication. He like teaching me that when I was a little boy and did it through innings pitched and earned runs and dividing by nine. And like all of that, it may help me understand the sports section when I was six years old to love sports the way I do, but like all of the statistical side of this led to shifting, led to the nerdification and really the, you know, the thorn and, and the Elias Sports bureaus and and then saber metrics and everything that became the nerdity of you 25 years ago, when you were a kid. And people we’ve met on analytics that that’s a word that became a baseball word, analytics. That’s a sort of a stock market kind of word that moved its way into Moneyball. We’re on to the next thing. And the next thing to me is the pitch clock kind of felt like it happened quickly. If you’re a major league fan, for a lot of the kids, they’ve been playing with it, if you went to Bowie, you went to Salisbury, you saw some of that coming, and you’re a baseball fan who’s done all of that. This moving the baseball technology, the strike zone. You said it’s like tennis. I don’t watch a lot of tennis any I mean, I just don’t. I know that they have such a thing. And there’s no Sports Center for me to get tennis results. You don’t have sports center in your house, so shame on you for wanting your ESPN. But I mean, these other sports have taken the technology in different ways, where baseball’s been slow to act in some things quick to shift when a bunch of nerds figured out how to do that, and then it screwed the game up, and then they have to sell the game and figure the game out. I mean, even here, they put scientists in here to run around with John Angelos and spend real taxpayer dollars to move the fence out, and now they’re moving the fence back in. And that’s just one little. It’s not little. It’s big. It’s a big it’s a big thing cost money. It’s, you know, but it’s, they’re all trying to game things based on the math, based on what my dad loved about it, what your dad loved about it, would, would nerd you out about it. And the strike zone is the beginning and the end of everything. And I’ve said this, you know, I’ve said this out loud, and I would say it to anybody about going to games, right, like you, and I get into it, and I’ll say out loud, and I’ll say this in every segment. You have a press pass, I don’t, if they give me one, I’ll come back. If they don’t, then it’s, am I going to spend money tonight, or somebody going to treat me, and because I just don’t give money to people that are denying my existence. And what I do, I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, African Americans saying they’re not going to eat in places where they don’t feel like they could work, which is as old as me, back to the 60s, right? So, but the baseball side of getting people there and keeping them there and keeping them interested in the home team, the hot dogs, the girls, the mascot, the you know what, all of that when I go to a baseball game, any game in any stadium, anywhere. And it took me till I was an adult, and this talk, I’m talking about sitting in the press box at Memorial Stadium as a young man, sitting in left field, all of my childhood in the bleachers in Section 10 and 11 in left field, all of my childhood watching baseball on television, where you can see the strike zone a little bit, and then they put the boxes up and like we’re all guessing and Palmer’s bitching, I’m talking home team sports 30 years ago, right to and it was always shot better. Home Team sports had great cameras. It was incredible. The games look better on home team sports, and they looked when I went to San Diego watch the games of my aunt Jane and the Padres are playing 30 years ago. So the television part of the technology, and my wanting to be at the ballpark to watch the game, because I talked about it for a living every day. So when I was at Oreo games, much like you’re kind of prickly a little bit when you’re in the press box watching a game, I was totally the same way in the 90s where I had to come on the air the next day and take four hours of phone calls about something somebody saw at the ball game. And I mean, watching the game, I had host here, had a real problem watching the games, and we’re just trying to guess, and it pissed me off. So on a day by day basis, if it’s what you do, the strike zones, everything and every nerd and even some weird people about baseball, like my buddy Tom cap, all he would talk about is who’s umpiring tonight, and that’s what pitchers would talk about. Mark Messina, I’ll have him on later this week. His brother always wondered, who’s calling strikes a high high ball, low ball. But from a fan’s perspective, from a fan’s perspective, who goes to Camden Yards to watch games, and this speaks to free the birds, the seats I love the best in the stadium in Camden Yards were always the upper deck, the section 388 seats, the seats that we did free the birds in, that’s where I went and I took Wild Bill back in. Oughts, and it wasn’t some gimmick or nasty Nestor, it wasn’t any of that. I could see the strike zone from there. I when I’m down third base or first base, I can’t see the strike zone. I’m just booing and yelling and pissing and moaning and, you know, I mean, I was down on the dugout in the curio seats for that Yankees game last year, and I’m 20 feet from strike zone. But I can’t see the strike zone because I’m seeing it from the third base dugout, and I don’t have the eye all day the way Don Zimmer would be watching it for 40 years and know whether it was inside or outside, even based on how the guy in the left hand side of the bat, I don’t know how you see the strike zone with the guy’s asses on your way from either side. So, I mean, I’m getting technical now. We want to nerd out. We’re not going to do this in the middle of the season. The season. But like to me, if I can’t see the strike zone, I’m not at the game. And if I’m at the game and I can’t see the strikes and I’m looking at the television to try to figure out or watching the replay, and we all know the replays are baked. They’re only going to put things on the screen that are going to make us yell and scream, um so and umpires getting thrown out of games and Earl Weaver and ripping up the book, and like all of that theatrics that goes on in my country, where my people are from, you know, this is the Hispanics, the whistling and yelling at the umpires and throwing peanuts, and like all the stuff that goes on about umpiring, blame it on the umpires. Umpires, you’re here for one to reason to right? I mean, all of that, right? I think about it in my own way, that I need to see the strike zone, be the strike zone, know the strike zone, in order to see the game. And everybody I’ve ever known, from every pitcher and every mark machine, every nerd like Tom cap, like me or my dad, or whatever the strike zone is the game. It defines the game and how the umpire would call it. And I mean, I saw the angel Hernandez, who was the Chicago celebrity that got up and pissed on him drunk, sang the national anthem. One of the, I don’t know one of the Chicago celebrities, was pooping on ANGEL Hernandez, and he took the man, stared at him and all that. And I’m thinking, man, all the angst about umpiring this strike zone thing is a real technological thing that’s going to happen the way the three point shot happened and my dad had to figure it out, and the way your dad had to figure an interleague play before he died, in the way that your nieces are gonna have to figure out a world where left handed specialists like Kevin Hickey don’t exist anymore, you know, like, so the evolution, to me, is the strike zone, and this thing we’re talking about is a it’s a BFD.
Luke Jones 37:27
It is. It’s funny about
Nestor Aparicio 37:29
that. But no, no more minority you think I am. Is you mentioning
Luke Jones 37:33
all that actually makes me pose the question, do we really want to eliminate all that
Nestor Aparicio 37:41
in the same I mean, I’ve look and I’m being, I’m being a little facetious. And, you know, once they had wrestling, come on the up and up, and they stopped fixing it, it changed everything about wrestling, didn’t it? Yeah,
Luke Jones 37:51
when, when? You know it. You know when K Fave isn’t K Fave anymore. You know, K fave is not real. You know, it’s just, I, I’ve made this comment tongue in cheek,
Nestor Aparicio 38:03
people are gambling on this. I want to continue to bring this up, because everything we do with the Maryland lottery and everything that happens in Vegas is regulated, regulated, regulated. You’re now settling bets with humans, which is still to me, I go back to this whole at the at the heart of it, getting the call right is their obligation. It’s not a rumor. It’s not like this NFL investigation to Justin Tucker, where, what can we scrub? What can we make go away? What do we know? Let’s figure out we know so we can lawyer up like, literally, it’s, it’s the game, it’s calling the game, and it’s was so important that the umpires to get whistled at or whatever, and it settles the bets. And I’m just saying out loud from a regulatory, grown up place of this, far beyond sports or Peter Angelo’s or anything, I would feel about baseball, positively or negatively, getting the call right has to be their obligation, their full obligation,
Luke Jones 39:02
yes and no, because it’s what I’ve said about replay in the NFL. Okay, if you really wanted to, you could review every single play and you’d be there seven hours, right? It Yes, it’s getting the call right, and I agree with you. But a lot of what you just laid out there isn’t that also part of the fabric of being a sports fan is complaining about the officiating. You
Nestor Aparicio 39:24
Jeffrey mayor, you follow social media.
Luke Jones 39:26
I mean, I would think some something. And I don’t mean this about just Ravens fans. I mean NFL fans in general. I think the pastime at times is almost more about complaining about the officiating than than what your own team does so look and again, like I said, I say it a little bit tongue in cheek, but you know, I can remember being seven years old, and you know the old expression, which obviously wasn’t a meant to be a literal threat, the old expression kill the umpire right when they missed the call. Uh, you know that that if everything becomes automated, yeah, you don’t have anything to complain about on that front anymore, right? Part of being a sports fan, and I find this to be so much of what I see on social media in 2025 and I’m not just trying to bang on social media, but it’s, it’s what’s recorded, right? Rather than you were just sitting with your friends 20 years, 30 years ago, and you said it at the time, you said your piece, and then you’re done, right? No one else heard it. But so much of what I see is fans are looking for someone else to blame when their team doesn’t play well, right? You see it a lot when, when your team loses, it’s the coach’s fault, or it’s out they move against the umpires fault. When your team wins, the players tend to get the credit, and maybe the coach doesn’t get as much credit, you know, doesn’t get the blame, and he doesn’t get the credit either when they win. So I guess, you know, long story short, and it’s just funny, because this was just my what came to mind, as you were kind of waxing poetics and nostalgic about, you know, the strike zone and umpires and to your point, whether you’re talking about players and and team scouting report on whoever was behind the plate that night, or just fans Being at the game or being at the bar, that that that culture of questioning the call, whether you thought you were completely hose, or whether it’s, oh, that’s a borderline call. I don’t know about that one. You know that all that going away? You know, I think people will miss it more than they think, actually, in the same way that think about it, what have we seen virtually disappear because of the replay system in Major League Baseball. Think of how few manager umpire arguments you see today, and there’s still some, but how few you see today compared to 20 years ago or 45 years ago, with Earl Weaver, right? So, you know, and I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but it’s different. So you know, that’s, that’s just, it’s something to at least just keep in the back of your mind as we see progress and we advance. And I’m not anti these things. Let’s be clear. I I’ve already said it, the pitch timer, to me, has been one of the biggest positive changes baseball has made in a really long time, because of just how slow the pace had, you know, it had been, become a crawl in between pitches. You know, it’s gotten it back to where it was, you know, PACE wise, 2530 years ago. So, you know, I’m not anti that. But again, there are, there are hidden, unintended consequences with whenever you implement changes like this, and, yeah, some of that might just be, oh well, this umpire has, you know, he’s got a strike zone that favors the pitchers. Or this guy’s a very hitter. This guy has a really liberal up in the zone, you can get a couple inches above the belt, which a lot of umpires aren’t that way, or, or this is a guy that you can kind of throw it at the top of the shin, and he’s going to give you the call, you know. So that will all go away, you know, if once we go fully automated, which I’m not saying is bad, but it will be different. It’ll be different in how we consume the game. And you know, that’s just something to keep in mind. You know, the umpires will much more become kind of inconsequential then, right? I mean, we can all remember Ken Kaiser or Joe cowboy, Joe West or angel Hernandez specifically as a lousy umpire here recently. Or we can all remember really good umpires over the years, Nestor, Shylock, so, you know, so they will all become they’ll kind of just fade into the background. And that’s not to say, you know, no one’s coming to watch the umpire. Let me be very clear. That’s why we all hate when an umpire has rabbit ears and throws someone out from the dugout who said something that not even the cameras picked up on, but it will definitely, it’ll be a change. It will change the game. It’ll be it’ll change the way that we consume and talk about it in game. And again, good or bad? That’s not for me to judge, but it will change. So, you know, just something to keep in mind, you know, in the same way that, yeah, you know some of the rule changes we’ve seen here recently. Look at how the shift that became such an overwhelming part of the game that these teams were really smart to have the data to say, Hey, this is where they hit the ball most often. This is where we’re going to line up. But it’s it became such a big part of the game that esthetically, it really hurt the game. So then they scaled it back right in the same way that the NBA has had three second rules, and, you know, they’ve gone back and forth, but now you can play zone defense for the longest time you couldn’t, you know. So, so you see these changes the NFL. Look at all the changes, rule changes they’ve made. Over the years, and things that are one way, and then you change it back. And you know, this week, you know the NFL, you know the competition committee, you know they’ll be talking about the kickoff, they’ll be talking about onside kicks. So, you know, with all the changes they made this past year, are they going to tweak it again? We’ll see. So, you know, that’s it, is part of it, though. And to your point, with gambling being something that used to be more of a taboo on the peripheral kind of thing, and now that is not that when every other commercial is for a sports book of some sort, then, yeah, these things come in the sharper focus and will be scrutinized much more. But, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 45:38
I’m not anti automation. But we’re happy called Nestor Shylock, it will change how we consume
Luke Jones 45:44
the game and how we talk about the game, even if it’s just when you’re sitting with your buddy at the bar, and you know, you used to complain about the umpire strike zone, and now it’ll just be,
Nestor Aparicio 45:54
well, what are you gonna do if your dad came back and my dad, they both could agree about Nestor Shylock during his career, by the way, Nestor Shylock, as much as I talk about myself, much far greater Nestor than I, maybe not as great as Nestor Kirchner or maybe Nestor Torres, but like better than Nestor Cortez, just as an example of recent Nestor. But during his career, Nestor Shylock works six all star games, three American League Championship Series, five World Series, and in 72 he received the umpire of the Year award. This is what you’re taking away. Take away the umpires when he retired 1978 and they’ve been trying to eliminate Nestor in baseball for at least two decades, especially in this town. Consider one of the best American League umpires of his generation, and a place that you’re very familiar with. Are you a society of American baseball research member Luke Jones, are you? I
Luke Jones 46:46
am not. I should be because of how big of a nerd I am, as you’ve said, but I am not. It says
Nestor Aparicio 46:52
right here, Shylock was highly respected by managers, and I remember Earl Weaver always speaking highly of Nestor Shylock, even in my presence, because my name was Nestor, and we talked about it, and yes, I did meet Nestor Shylock at Our Lady of Fatima. Uh, Johnny Rollo was there. I know he he’s not voting right way with me, but he was there we were kids, uh, Mark Carol kowski and Cal Ripken senior. I met Nestor Shylock in the basement of Our Lady of Fatima at Sports Night in February was always put on by Ben Neal and Nestor Shylock. Signed my program that day, and he was from my dad’s home area up in upstate Pennsylvania. He is in Do you know where Luzerne County is in Pennsylvania? Does that make sense to you? Luzerne County? Yeah, yeah. He’s in their Hall of Fame. So there you go. Is that, is that pretty good, a little Nestor. So I’m going to tell one more story about the strike zone, since we’re talking about umpires, and we you got, like, you started with the Luciano, and I’m like, and when there’s a there are a whole lot of Nestor involved in anything. So I mean, I got to stand up for I was going to give you
Luke Jones 47:58
the umpire that, you know, because thinking of me growing up, you know, growing up as a kid of the 80s and 90s. You thanking your guy. I think Derwent Merrill was a good umpire. Okay, he was a good one. That always came to mind for whatever reason. Who was the one that
Nestor Aparicio 48:11
screwed up the no hitter with the pitcher? What that he apologized for all that. I remember that too. Oh my gosh. Now I’m drawing a play. Yeah, it’s all right. So I got it. Jim Joyce. Jim Joyce, right?
Luke Jones 48:23
Off umpire too, right? Yeah. Oh. He was a very highly respected, yeah, yeah. So,
Nestor Aparicio 48:28
I mean, everybody gets things wrong, yeah. What was the the umpire from Baltimore that that screwed up the 85 World Series that wasn’t denier, no, that was, that was denkinger. That was, yeah, okay, all right, so well, and then, and then the spinning incident with Alomar and hirschback. I mean, umpires are famous, right? I mean, like, you know, they’re names, they’re a part of the game, right? All right. This is one thing I want to say to you that I need to because we’re going to geese about umpiring in the strike zone. I just want to give you this one thing, um, I grew up Memorial Stadium, taking the bus out the whole deal in the 70s, and we, I always sat in left field. And on those big games when the Yankees and Red Sox would come in in 79 the general admission were reserved general admission, which is an oxymoron, right? But you could sit out in Section 16, and I did. My dad caught a home run from Lou Pinella out there, and we got the brought the ball home. Was great. Um, but you never could see that. You know, it’s still in left field. You could see the strike zone pretty good from Gary Renee. From Gary Rene keys vision out there, Bombo Rivera or Willie Wilson, whoever playing left field that night. Greg Leslie. But when I went to Philadelphia for the first time as a kid in 8081 summer, 81 and then after that, all of my youth, I mean, once I got a driver’s license in 8485 I saw Gooden, Hershey, iser, you know, anybody that was a great pitcher, Carlton, when he was pitching, I would go up when he pitched, specifically, Schilling came and he married my best friend, and like all of that going on, right? So I would go to the vet a lot. And I loved sitting in the vet. I remember this with my wife. We saw. Call Messina pitch for the Yankees against the Phillies at the vet. It might have been oh three. It might have been the last year it was there. I remember just and we drove up and we got it was they sold a lot of tickets in the Yankees Phillies early in our league. It was like a Wednesday night or something. Cena was pitching. We sat in center, center center field, like total at the vet, you could walk behind center field. You could walk behind Gary Maddox like literally, and walk around the bowl in the 80s, and those seats out in center field. Now they were always in the black tent because of the strike zone and Jack wagons and the pitchers and the catchers need to see the strike zone. But in the vet, you could sit even higher up in center field, still the best seat. Now you could say Camden Yards, where the bar is out, you know where it is, but there is something about seeing the strike zone from that center field vantage point that the vet offered that made it made me love going up there and watching a game, even if Kurt left me tickets behind home plate. Tony grim was playing, or whatever. I would take my son out to center field when he was little, and we would watch the game from center field, because I just like seeing the strike zone. That’s that’s what a baseball guy I am, because he’s can’t see the strike zone anywhere that’s not behind home plate or in center field. And even as a fan, I choose center field. I Seattle had a real the new stadium in Seattle and Safeco has a really good center field vantage point. When I went out there for my tour 10 years ago, I watched most of the game in center field because it was so nice that not all the ballparks afford. That is what I’m saying, that the ashtray ballparks, it was an unintended consequence.
51:35
Yeah, yeah, no question so
Nestor Aparicio 51:37
8well, you have the same view that the camera had,
51:41
right? Oh, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 51:44
all right. So that’s my nerd. That’s as 30 as I get, like, just 30 years of being a nerd,
Luke Jones 51:49
yeah? Just, you know, and again, just to kind of finish the thought, you know, as we’re talking about, you know, which, again, something that’s happening on a trial basis in spring training, you know, we’ll see where it goes from here. But you know, there is, there is something to be said about that, not that I am anti getting the calls right, because I want to get I want to see them get the calls right. I think everyone does. But you think about how much discourse centers around the umpire on a pitch to pitch basis, or, you know, we see it in the NFL. I mean, officiating is such a hot topic and all that, but, you know, it, there is something to be said that if you find ways to eliminate all those things, oh, well, actually, I have to just talk about the games and not talking about the umpire or the ref trying to screw my team over. And it’s just, you know, it’s just, there’s some irony in that, because of then
Nestor Aparicio 52:38
they’ll just turn on. It’d be the media’s fault and Rosenthal’s fault. I’m sure they’ll just blame, they’ll blame, they’ll blame the coach. All right, enough nerding out. We’ll have games to talk about spring training. Luke and I love baseball. If you love baseball, you’ll be here. You know that we’ve been doing this a long, long time. We’re not going anywhere. He’s got a press pass. I don’t which I you figure out why, because we both love baseball, really talking about baseball so and we’re looking forward to, dude, I I’m 34 years into my career now, and for my last name being Aparicio, and as much as I know about baseball, and like baseball, and even the memorabilia side in the history, and just all of all of it, this is as exciting for a baseball fan to look up on February and say there are 162 games coming. Can they win? Yes, yes. There have not been a lot of February’s for nasty Nestor here on the radio in 33 years, 34 years now, where I can look up in February and say they might have the best team. And I don’t know, there’s been three or four or five of those years, 9697 you know, you know, maybe 14, 1516, pick one or two of those. Maybe last year. Kind of, sort of, it didn’t feel so good when pitchers started getting hurt around this time of year, but they, you know, they’re assembled, and they have money and they have all of that, so we’ll be talking plenty on the field, but the structure of the game still a lot of fun for us, and we’ve been nerding out on Justin Tucker and jurisprudence and massages and Mark Andrews and all of that. The baseball season’s coming, and I’m looking forward to
Luke Jones 54:07
it, man, yeah, no question about it. And, I mean, you know, I don’t, I’m not ready to say the best, because the Dodgers aren’t just but American League see what happens Yankees. Yankees have some questions. I mean, for all the all the flowers that people want to give them. They lost one sodo, right? I mean, like so anyway, they will have plenty to talk about on the field. Fair questions. Every team has questions, right? In this day and age, you talked about your debt, and this will be my last. I know we’re wrapping up here. You talked about your dad. My dad the way the game has changed the most, beyond talking about replay, strike zone automation, which has come in all that would be the pitching, how specialized it’s become, how insane the velocity and spin. In and how these pitchers are basically built in labs now, in terms of cameras and data and arm angle, all the different things. But more importantly, and this is where the crisis part kicks in, the injuries, the health problems with pitching in baseball. And to me, that’s the next frontier in terms of where the game’s going, automated strike zone. That’ll be part of it. They’ll do it, and then life will go on. But the teams that can figure out how to keep their pitchers healthy and to maximize their investments in that way, that’s going to be the next frontier. So Sports Science, Sports Medicine, you know health, you know player movement, tracking, data, all that which they’re doing that stuff, but the team that can that becomes the most sophisticated one that can try to keep these pitchers healthy, they’ll have a major competitive edge, that’s for sure. He
Nestor Aparicio 55:50
is Lou Jones. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S T, you can find him out at Baltimore loop. We’re gonna be doing plenty of baseball around here as well. We linger longer sometimes, and we get loquacious because we dig it. And at some point I’ll pick up that 1961 bazooka Aparicio. We are wnst and 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking baseball and nerdity. Hey, it’s spring training.
