Robotic umpires are officially knocking on MLB’s door.
Commissioner Rob Manfred told The Athletic’s Evan Drellich on Wednesday that the league will test an automated ball calling system in spring training in 2025 with the hope that the system can be implemented in the 2026 regular season.
The system will reportedly give teams two calls per match, with teams keeping them when they are correct. Not every spring training field will reportedly have ABS cameras, but all teams will have the opportunity to play with the new system.
From Athletics:
“I think we will have an ABS spring training test that will give all the major leaguers a meaningful opportunity to see what the challenge system will look like,” Manfred said. “From my point of view, there are two sides to this test: It’s about what the clubs think about it, and also what do the players think about it? And we will have to solve both.”
MLB has experimented with ABS systems in two formats in the minor leagues since 2019. In some games, robo umps used to call every pitch, while others used the call system that is about to hit spring training.
The challenge system was used full-time in Triple-A, and you can see it used to end a game here:
At one point last year, MLB reported that teams had a 47% success rate with challenges.
Robo umps once felt like a radical change for MLB, but given how MLB has approached them, they’ve become something of an inevitability. Having been around the minor leagues for years, a huge number of current major leaguers have experience with this system.
The transition of the league has been very slow, but it seems to be almost over. There will almost certainly be complaints about the system (not every pitch that’s technically a strike looks like a strike, and the same goes for balls), but many fans will chalk it up to the human element, which can be infuriating at times.