Craig Carton Asks Bobby Valentine: Is AI Ruining Baseball?

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
Big Mac is back tomorrow. Zach Gelb sitting in, doing a nice job. Another hour to play.
Obviously, as the rain comes down and the flooding starts again, please be safe and make sure you get out of harm's way. If you're in it, happy to have my main man. I have not talked to Bobby in some time now, but I adore him. Mr. Bobby Valentine, Bobby, it's Craig and Zach. How you been, pal?

**Bobby Valentine** (0:22)
Hey, it has been too long, Craig, to tell you the truth, but I want you to know that during all of your time and now that you're up on top again, I've been a fan and I like what you do, regardless of what everybody else says, you know what I mean?

**Craig Carton** (0:38)
I'm well aware of what you mean. And I always tell the great story that one of the, and I've known Bobby a long time, and Bobby Boomer and I up, you know, to the college years ago to give a presentation. I'll never forget when you and I and many others were at Canada Fitzgerald for their big charity day, you know, to remember the lost souls on 9-11.
And I walked in the way I usually do with a T-shirt and jeans on or a hoodie on or whatever it was, and you looked great in a jacket and tie, and you said, Craig, you got a second? I go, yeah, Bobby, what's up? And you go, if you want people to take you seriously, you better start dressing better.

**Bobby Valentine** (1:14)
So apparently I never... But you were trending, dude, that everyone started dressing just like you, including me. That's right.

**Craig Carton** (1:21)
That's exactly right. Well, always good to have you on. I'm gonna just out of the gate, and I tease you going into the commercial break. I would think this would bother you to your core, but Adam Aduvino shared a story the other day that the New York Mets coaches, or some of them, were bragging about the fact that they are so reliant on artificial intelligence, AI, that this season, no joke, they're allowing the AI to decide what pitches to throw during every at bat of a game.
And I said, I understand analytics to a point. I understand not being afraid of technology, but that just sounds like something that's crazy. So when you heard that story, or if you're here for the first time now, how would you react to that if your boss said to you, you're not calling the pitches, Bobby, we're going to let the computer do that?

**Bobby Valentine** (2:16)
You know, it's crazy, Craig, but I'm sitting here and I have my own bot. You know, I mean, and I've been doing a lot of work in figuring out things that I should be doing. Matter of fact, I'm trying to make an AI Tommy Lasorda so we could go through all of his old memorabilia and have Tommy actually talk about it. But I think it's just progress. I mean, I don't want to say, oh God, I can't believe they were doing it, because I mean, you're always trying to get an edge. And what you're trying to teach your sketcher is what the bot is really giving in a nanosecond, you know, the sequence thing that probably works. He swung at the high fastball, therefore the breaking ball is probably good. But it's not so different than what the humanoid could do.
And I'm not even sure that it's so much better, because there's a bit of what the human feels at the time. I know people hate the idea of gut reaction feel. No, what that catcher and what that pitcher are feeling is what all the data points are giving them. What their eyes, what their ears, what the pregame meetings, what the statistics, what all those things rolled into one. And I think the bot just misses a little of the in second, this moment competition that is so vital to win.

**Craig Carton** (3:47)
Yeah, I agree. I think more than any other sport, baseball is a sport where gut matters. And if you told a guy like Aaron Boone, who literally grew up in a baseball dugout on a baseball field with his dad and grandfather and uncle and brother, he has a certain gut. You, of course, had a gut on when to trust a pitcher or not to trust a pitcher, what kind of pitch to throw. And I think if we eliminate that, I think we do it at our own peril because a computer can't read human emotion as a pitcher. You know, are the bright lights too big for him? Is his arm tired? Can he throw the fastball at 100 if he has to? And I think it's dangerous. And I'm not saying necessarily that, you know, the Mets are 17 games under 500 because of it, but it certainly hasn't helped them.