Regular readers here know about both my passion for baseball and my disgust with how many games are determined by obviously wrong home plate calls on balls and strikes. Statistics purportedly show that umpires as a group are correct with their ball/strike edicts about 93% of the time, representing a significant improvement since electronic pitch-tracking was instituted in 2008. What explains the improvement? That’s simple: umpires started bearing down once they knew that their mistakes could be recorded and compiled. In 2008, strikes were called correctly about 84% of the time, which, as someone who has watched too many games to count, surprises me not at all.

Even 93% is unacceptable. It means that there is a wrong call once every 3.6 plate appearances, and any one of those mistakes could change the game’s outcome. Usually it’s impossible to tell when it has, because the missed call was part of a chaos-driven sequence diverging from the chain of events that may have flowed from the right call in ways that can’t possibly be determined after the fact. Sometimes it is obvious, as in several games I’ve seen this season. An umpire calls what was clearly strike three a ball, and the lucky batter hits a home run on the next pitch.

Before every game was televised with slo-mo technology and replays, this didn’t hurt the game or the perception of its integrity because there was no record of the mistakes. (Sometimes it wasn’t even a mistake: umpires would punish batters for complaining about their pitch-calling by deliberately declaring them out on strikes on pitches outside the strike zone.) Now, however, a missed strike call that determines a game is both infuriating and inexcusable. As with bad out calls on the bases and missed home run calls, the technology exists to fix the problem.

Baseball only installed a replay challenge system after the worst scenario for a missed call: a perfect game—no hits, runs or base-runners—was wiped out by a terrible safe call at first on what should have been the last out of the game. The game was on national TV; the missed call was indisputable. That clinched it, and a replay challenge system was quickly instituted. I long assumed that robo-umps would only be instituted after an obviously terrible strike call changed the course of a World Series or play-off game, embarrassing Major League Baseball. For once, the sport isn’t waiting for that horse to leave before fixing the barn door. It has been testing an automated balls and strikes system (ABS) in the minor leagues for several years now. Good. That means that some kind of automated ball and strike system is inevitable.

Almost as infuriating as seeing at-bats and games ruined by bad strike calls are the rationalizations for them offered by ex-players and old school announcers. “It’s part of the game!” Moronic: that’s like saying that fatal car crashes are part of driving, and convicting innocent people of crimes is part of the jury system. The objective is to eliminate such “parts” as much as possible. “As long as the umpire is consistent, it’s fine.” This literally means that an umpire not calling the strike zone correctly is acceptable as long as he makes the same mistake repeatedly and everyone is ready for it. “It’s the human factor!” Yeah, so is cheating. That doesn’t mean game-altering mistakes should be tolerated.

Major League Baseball sent a memo to all 30 teams this week updating them on the progress of its testing. It has been experimenting with two approaches in Triple-A since last season: a challenge system, in which a bad call by live umpires can be challenged by the batter and resolved instantly by the electronic pitch-tracking, and fully automated balls and strikes. The research so far shows a strong preference by fans and players for the challenge system, with a set number of challenges per game, over an automated strike zone or the old-fashioned method, with umpires making calls without technology.

Well, that would be an improvement, at least. It would still allow bad calls that go unchallenged to alter the course of games in unknown ways, but apparently the fully automated system has some kinks in it that haven’t been solved, like setting the top and bottom of the strike zone for each player.

A key principle in the Ethics Alarms pantheon is “Fix the problem.” A challenge system—apparently the challenges are resolved in seconds—would prevent the nightmare scenario of no-hitters, exciting 9th inning rallies, historic hitting streaks and championship games being wrecked by an obviously erroneous pitch call.

Hurry up.

In other umpire-related news, MLB revealed last week that umpire Pat Hoberg has been suspended for violating the league’s gambling rules, and is banned from games this season while he is appealing the ruling. Ethics Alarms has already weighed in about the recklessness and greed of all professional sports cashing in on the online gambling bonanza, but this is especially dangerous for MLB, which was almost killed when the World Series was rigged by gamblers in 1919. Baseball still has its all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, banned from the Hall of Fame because he bet on baseball.

The sport has already experienced a wave of gambling scandals this season (here, and here), and only a naif would insist that more and worse aren’t on the way. Umpires being corrupted is an obvious danger: they aren’t millionaires like the players are, and the lure of fixing games for profit in their position mirrors the reason the 1919 Black Sox threw the Series: the players felt they weren’t being paid enough by their cheapskate owner. (They weren’t.)

Hoberg is the only known umpire in many decades to be disciplined for gambling. He will surely not be the last.