Opinion | Automatic umpires in baseball would ruin pitching

The only problem with Barry Svrluga’s call in his June 28 Sports column, “With help, umpires can stay in the zone,” for automated strike-zone calls is that it would put our best pitchers out of business. Max Scherzer, for example, is not trying to put a pitch into the strike zone. He is trying to get the batter to swing at a ball outside the zone. With an automatic umpire, batters could just ignore most of his pitches until they get the inevitable fastball right down the middle.