THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Mariners aren't hitting ... but umpires aren't helping

Let’s get one thing on the table right now.

This is not a defense of the Mariners’ hapless batters — who swing at pitches in the dirt, at passing butterflies, at planes flying overhead.

These guys will have to begin hitting somewhere close to what it says on the back of their baseball cards, or we may be looking at a lost season at T-Mobile Park.

Having said that …

The subject today is umpires.

Specifically, the men calling balls and strikes, who get it wrong so often that it can (and does) decide wins and losses.

The Mariners are only primary witnesses in this rant because I see them more often than any other team.

Obviously, it’s easier for me to spot umpiring malfeasance involving our local heroes.

And brother, it’s a mess.

Major League Baseball has hit the jackpot with the changes it made this season — but the next move can’t come soon enough.

The game needs technology to call balls and strikes.

It exists (the name is Automated Ball/Strike System, or ABS), it’s been tested successfully in venues up to Triple-A — and other sports have implemented similar systems with minimum fuss.

THINK OF the Hawkeye system used in tennis.

No more arguments over whether a serve was in or out.

The lasers tell you, and they’re right every time.

Technology has worked just fine in baseball’s minor leagues, and the only argument against it (not counting the umpires union) is that good, old-fashioned human error — and the fierce rhubarbs it causes — might be missed.

Huh?

Tell that to a slumping hitter, fighting to put a ball in play with a runner on third and one out, when …

The ump calls him out on a pitch 3 inches outside.

Wait, there’s one more contrary position here.

What if you throw a ball 30 or 40 feet in the air, and on its way down, it clips the edge of that strike zone established by the ABS?

Well, fine.

If a major league pitcher wants to try heaving the ball into the sky with such accuracy that he gets a strike on the down draft …

Go for it.

Meantime, any and all baserunners are off and sprinting for the world’s easiest steals.

So, let’s ignore that bit of nonsense, shall we?

The ABS system, which I won’t try to describe scientifically (and make a fool of myself), works pretty much the way you see balls and strikes finding or missing that box on TV.

The process is more or less the same, but with the ABS transmitting a call to the umpire almost instantaneously.

My question is why WOULDN’T you want correct calls every time, instead of ruckus we saw last weekend — with Mariners manager Scott Servais thrown out of one game, and Jarred Kelenic tossed from another?

LET’S NOT allow bias to creep in here.

In Seattle’s win over the Astros last Sunday, reliever Trevor Gott pitched a perfect inning, aided just a little bit by one wrong strike call against each of the three Houston hitters.

Now, let’s look the other side of this imperfect human impact on an opposite result.

The Mariners trailed Texas 2-1 in the ninth inning Monday night, with crafty, soft-tossing left Will Smith charged with getting the final three outs for the Rangers.

Smith had to face Eugenio Suarez, Cal Raleigh and Teoscar Hernandez, three unquestioned power hitters, each of whom could tie the game with a single swing.

On the 1-0 pitch to Suarez, a changeup broke way inside.

It wasn’t even close, but it was called a strike.

Instead of a 2-0 “hitter’s count,” Suarez was saddled with a different situation.

He struck out on a slider below the zone.

Hernandez, the final hitter, also had a 1-0 pitch missed quite blatantly, prompting TV analyst Dan Wilson (a former player) to say, “The missed calls are critical in these situations. The hitters should have had an advantage in the count, but they didn’t.”

HERNANDEZ also struck out swinging on a pitch that missed the strike zone, but …

When you have no idea what the call might be, you almost have to flail at anything once you get saddled with two strikes.

That’s the whole point of implementing the ABS system.

Both pitchers and hitters would have confidence that calls will be correct.

The basic theory is the same as replaying the tag on a steal of second base.

MLB should want to get calls right.

It’s not that the home plate umpire would have the night off, either, since he’d still being responsible for foul tips, check swings and all sorts of other calls.

What he would NOT do is call a hitter out in the ninth inning on a pitch that completely misses the strike zone.

It’s absolutely time for MLB to take this last step to make the game cleaner and fairer for everyone involved.

Including the umpires.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”