This is fun reading, but I can't wait for the "this is a sabermetrician's wet dream" cracks from old media:

Look out Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka. A pair of baseball-playing robots that can pitch and hit with incredible results have been developed in Japan.

The pitching robot, with its three-fingered hand, can throw 90 percent of its pitches in the strike zone, won't need any relief from the bullpen and never asks for a pay raise. The batting robot, which has a sensor to determine if pitches are strikes or balls, hits balls in the strike zone almost 100 percent of the time, doesn't swing at pitches outside the strike zone, and is guaranteed to pass all drug tests.

But here's the best part:

The pitching robot throws a plastic foam ball at 25 miles per hour, but Ishikawa is hoping to increase the speed to 93 mph and make it able to throw off-speed pitches like curves and sliders.

Hopefully he'll have better luck with the robots than Leo Mazzone did with Daniel Cabrera.