Manfred: ABS Likely To Arrive As Challenge System In MLB, Though Likely Not Ready For 2025
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke to members of the media about the future implementation of an automatic ball-strike (ABS) system, also known as “robo umps”, in the majors. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com and Evan Drellich of The Athletic relayed some of his comments. The commissioner said that there will likely be a challenge system in place when ABS first arrives in the big leagues, but that isn’t likely to happen next year.
Robo umps have seemed inevitable for some time now. Many other sports have seen technological advancements gradually take over duties previously carried out by human officials and the improvement of ball tracking technology has allowed baseball fans to clearly see calls missed by umpires in real time. As various websites track and grade umpires, fans have become increasingly vocal about their disappointment in umpires and the desire to move towards robo umps.
MLB has been trying out various methods in the minor leagues and in independent partner leagues for years now and Manfred said there is a “growing consensus” that players would prefer a challenge system as opposed to letting the ABS system take over completely. “Those who have played with it do have a strong preference for the challenge system over ABS calling every pitch,” Manfred said, “and that has certainly altered our thinking on where we might be headed.”
In a challenge system, the game is still called the traditional way, with the human umpire calling balls and strikes. However, each team gets a set number of challenges each game, where they can appeal to the ABS system to see if the umpire made a mistake.
This is something that Jayson Stark of The Athletic took a detailed look at in August of last year. While some fans may simply want every call to be rigorously made as the machine sees it, Stark got various reasons from baseball people as to why it would be preferable to do it with challenges.
One reason is feel for the game, with the example that a human umpire might expand the strike zone during a blowout to move the game along, something the robo ump wouldn’t do. There’s the entertainment factor of seeing the challenge play out on the scoreboard at the ballpark or on the broadcast. As an example, a minor league game last month ended on a challenged call, with video relayed by Foul Territory on X. Some want pitchers with consistent control to get a more favorable zone from the ump, as compared to a more wild pitcher. Some also don’t want the skill of catcher framing to go away.
The last point is something that Manfred touched on yesterday. “I think the players feel that a catcher that frames is part of the art of the game,” Manfred said. “If in fact framing is no longer important, the kind of players that would occupy that position might be different than they are today. You could hypothesize a world where instead of a premium catcher who’s focused on defense, the catching position becomes a more offensive player. That alters people’s careers, so those are real, legitimate concerns that we need to think all the way through before we jump off that bridge.”
Though the challenge system may be coming to the big leagues at some point, it doesn’t seem like it will be next year. “We still have some technical issues; I don’t mean technology, I mean technical issues in terms of the operation of the system,” Manfred said. “We haven’t made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we hoped at this point. I think it’s becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for ’25. One thing we did learn with the changes that we went through last year is taking the extra time to make sure you have it right is definitely the best approach. I think we’re going to use that same approach here.”
Per Feinsand, those issues are related to whether the strike zone is determined by a player’s height or by camera systems. “I’m not sure that anybody is wholly satisfied with either approach,” Manfred said. “We have not started those conversations [with the MLBPA] because we haven’t settled on what we think about it. It’s hard to have those conversations before you know what you’re thinking.”
Drellich also relayed some of Manfred’s thoughts on other topics in a separate piece. In that one, Manfred discusses the uniform situation with Nike, improvements to the Sacramento ballpark that will host the A’s for the next three years, the rise of pitcher injuries, the 2028 Olympics, Diamond Sports Group, pretacked balls and more. MLBTR covered some of these topics last night.
Atlantic League To Shelve Robot Umpires, Return Mound To Standard Distance
The independent Atlantic League, one of four independent leagues designated as official MLB Partner Leagues following the 2020 reorganization of MiLB, will return to the traditional method of calling balls and strikes in 2022, reports J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. The league had adopted the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system — known colloquially as the ‘robo-ump’ — ahead of the 2019 season, when it reached an agreement with Major League Baseball to test equipment and rules changes under consideration for use in affiliated ball. The league will also return the distance between the pitching rubber and home plate to the conventional 60 feet, 6 inches after a late-season trial of an extra foot was met with disfavor by players and coaches.
As Cooper points out, the strike-zone change is likely driven by the expectation of a more widespread implementation of ABS in the minors; there’s been no official announcement, but MLB posted job listings for an ABS tech to work with each team in Triple-A West (the successor to the Pacific Coast League) earlier in the offseason. The technology was also deployed in Low-A Southeast (the revamped Florida State League) in 2021 and in the 2019 Arizona Fall League.
Though just one of a number of rules changes mooted by the commissioner’s office during Rob Manfred’s tenure, the proposed automation (and thereby standardization) of the strike zone has proven to be among the most polarizing. Beyond more longstanding intra-fan disputes regarding the relative values of innovation and tradition, proponents of the idea have suggested that a strike zone standardized by precise technological measurement would substantially reduce the element of human error in umpiring decisions (and, perhaps, reverse the trend of declining contact rates), while those opposed argue that imprecision, ambiguity, and the idiosyncrasies of individual umpires — as well as the arguments that often ensue as a result of these — add intrigue and drama to the game.
Regardless of one’s opinion of the potential implementation of ABS at the big-league level, any longtime fan of the game will recognize a progressive change in the strike zone since the advent of pitch-tracking technology in the early 2000s, when MLB introduced QuesTec’s Umpire Information System in big-league ballparks to track umpire performance. This much less invasive system drew its fair share of criticism (Curt Schilling infamously took a bat to a QuesTec camera after a poor start in May 2002, and the umpires union filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board over its use before securing its removal in 2005 contract negotiations). Still, it’s long-term effects (as compiled in 2017 by Joe Lemire of Sports Business Journal) have rendered the effective strike zone closer to its rule-book definition, decreasing its width while increasing its height.
Despite scrapping the ABS, the Atlantic League will continue to test a number of potential tweaks to the game, including the use of 17-inch bases (2 inches larger than standard), anti-shifting rules (which require the four infielders to have two feet in the infield dirt before every pitch), and enhanced extra-inning ‘zombie runner’ rules (which would place runners at first and second to start the 10th inning and load the bases in any innings thereafter). Further changes to Atlantic League play are expected to be announced later in the spring.