Pretty sure hockey and soccer have minimum sizes but are not all identical.

lolwhat?

The stadiums are all different obv but the playing fields are all the same.

So far, I'm not seeing much argument against the advantage would go to the hitter. The question now is how much. Of course, we can't know until it happens but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect at least a 5 point bump in OBP. What would that mean for runs scored?

To try and get an idea without doing too much fancy math I've looked at OBP vs Runs Scored in the NL and AL of the past several years.

2007: AL 31 more runs scored vs 4 pts more OBP
2008: 41 vs 4
2009: 63 vs 5
2010: 20 vs 3
2011: 55 vs 3
2012: 37 vs 2
2013: 53 vs 5
Avg: 42.9 vs 3.71 or 11.6 runs per 1 pt increase in OBP

I know this is back-of-the-napkin stuff, but I'm just trying to get a feel for how many more runs we could expect to see from this. Obv doesn't account for slugging. If anyone has better maths, feel free.

So if that holds, then we could expect to see an additional:

-58 runs per team per year if OBP rises 5 points, or an increase of .36 runs per game.
-116 runs per team per year if OBP rises 10 points, or an increase of .72 runs per game.
-174 at 15 points, or 1.08 R/G
-232 at 20 points, or 1.44 R/G

I really have little clue how much an advantage batters would get, and thus how much a corresponding jump in run production we could expect. For a bit of historical reference, when the mound was lowered in 1969, OBP increased 19 points that year and then another 10 the next year before stabilizing (edit: that was for NL only, AL went up 25 pts in '69, but only 1 in '70). I assume it took awhile for the pitchers to adjust to the generally lower and more uniform mound heights. Good article here, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...ne/MAG1082211/ I'd guess this sort of change to an automated zone might take longer for batters to take advantage of, but I'm not sure if pitchers would ever be able to adjust.

Most baseball fans think this brings charm to the sport

That's every called strike from 2007 with red being propensity to be called a strike

Holy crap. Now I don't think it's out of line to guess 30 pt increase in OBP from automation. Jeezus.

Guessing that chart could be misleading. Can you break it down to simple percentage of pitches out of the zone called strikes? I thought it was only something like 5%.

The "book" zone can always be right sized.

I dont know. I just grabbed that from this random blog so maybe take it with a grain of salt.

Tangentially related, the pitch framing article at Grantland talks about how good pitch framers can add 2-3 wins per year to their club.

An advantage for the pitcher. With nobody on, you can play your catcher behind second base.

Soccer pitches can have massive differences in size if teams want to do it

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/foot...en_neutral.pdf

The obvious solution. That's why it needs to be installed next year in the minors, adjusted as needed. Then ML debut in '15. Gogogogo

ah, so that heat map has gotten smaller now as PitchF/X has been used to grade umpires, which isnt surprising. This video highlights that, 11m 44sec is what you want.

http://youtu.be/HjPs94JrV6M?t=11m44s

edit - video is pretty good btw, bad quality though