The Korea Baseball Softball Association (KBSA) will introduce an automatic ball strike system (robot referee) from the round of 16 of the 2023 Shinsegae E-Mart Cup National High School Baseball Championship. With the introduction of robot referees, KBSA expects to prevent irregularities in the entrance examination, the four major sports evils, and to minimize conflicts and controversies caused by unfair referee decisions.

KBSA held a demonstration at Daejeon Hanwha Life Eagles Park on March 28 to verify the performance and reliability of robot referees, and collected opinions from field leaders and KBSA referees to establish strike zones and collect opinions for smooth system introduction. did.

The robot referee’s strike standard is that a pitched ball must pass both the front strike zone in front of the home plate and the back strike zone behind the home plate to be judged as a strike. According to the results of the demonstration, KBSA made the strike zone wider by about one ball than the robot referee’s strike zone set in the KBO Futures League, and the height of the strike zone was slightly lowered considering the average height of high school players. In addition, reflecting the ball trajectory of sidearm pitchers, the strike zone behind the home plate will be operated about half a ball wider than the front.

The robot referee will be implemented from April 3, when the round of 16 of the 2023 Shinsegae Emart Cup National High School Baseball Championship will be held, and on the first day of introduction, a test will be operated first to minimize trial and error. During the test operation, the referee judges balls and strikes, and managers of both teams are given an opportunity to request up to three interpretations of the ball and strike decisions through the referee. 먹튀검증

From the second day of the Round of 16 game, robot referees are introduced, and the decision of the robot referee is recognized as the final decision. If the game cannot be played due to an error by the robot referee, recovery is attempted on the spot, and if there is a delay of more than 30 minutes, the referee will judge the ball or strike.

Regarding the introduction of robot referees, Chairman Lee Jong-hoon said, “I think the role of the association is to create an environment where high school teams can produce the best performance under the same conditions as fair referee decisions. By introducing robot referees, we expect positive effects such as minimizing controversy in games, preventing irregularities in entrance exams and match fixing, and improving the performance of players.”