The future is near! Major League Baseball is testing the automated ball-strike system (ABS) in select spring training ballparks this season. Umpires still call balls and strikes with their eyes, but each team is allowed two challenges per game to check with the “robots” if the pitch in question was accurately called.
The catch is only the pitcher, catcher, or batter can call for the challenge with no assistance from the dugout. If you win your challenge by overturning the call, you retain that challenge. But if you are wrong, it is gone for the rest of the game.
“You burn one [challenge] in the first inning and it’s not really a good look,” Tyler Black said – he’s regarded by evaluators as having maybe the best strike zone discipline in the entire Brewers system. He has seen the challenge system rise out of previous minor league testing, which included games that were called 100% by robots.
“I think it kind of gets stagnant when it’s just ‘ball or strike,'” Black continued. MLB polled fans who saw the handful of combinations to call a game, whether it is 100% automated, 100% human, or somewhere in the middle with the challenge system. That poll revealed the majority of Triple-A fans preferred the challenge.
Part of the testing in the minors was trying to define the strike zone. MLB has settled on a standardized percentage of a player’s height as the top and bottom of the zone, not their batting stance. This way, a player can’t change their batting stance to have a different zone from pitch-to-pitch.
The strike zone was also defined for depth, as the ABS measures where the ball is when it crosses the center of the plate – or 8.5 inches deep. Home still serves as the sides of the zone, 17 inches wide in total.
“MLB has people looking into this stuff, they’re not guessing,” Pat Murphy said in preparation for their first game with challenges at their disposal. “If they are going to make a rule change, they do a thorough job of researching it, testing it, and seeing the effect it’s going to have on the games.”
Only five Cactus League ballparks have the system available: Surprise (TEX/KC), Goodyear (CIN/CLE), Scottsdale (AZ/COL), Glendale (LAD/CWS), and Peoria (SEA/SD). Anytime the Brewers are visitors at these parks, they have the ABS available to them.
Baseball purists should not fear, this system is not going to be used in regular season games in the next two seasons – as it would need to be negotiated into the Collective Bargaining Agreement to reach the Majors.
For now, it will continue to be tested and tweaked and refined based on player and fan feedback. Given MLB nailed the pitch clock implementation, perhaps they can continue to move the game forward into a new modern era.
Dominic Cotroneo is the host of “Brewers Extra Innings” the postgame show for the Brew Crew here on 620 WTMJ. You can follow Dom on X @Dom_Cotroneo and on Instagram @DomCBaseball to bring you closer to spring training coverage from Phoenix all month long.
