Baseball’s robotic future: MLB’s umpire experiment

WEB DESK: Major League Baseball (MLB) is reportedly moving ahead with using robot umpires during spring training in February of 2025.

Robot umpires will be implemented across 13 ballparks which host 19 teams.

AUTOMATED BALL-STRIKE SYSTEM

The use of robot umpires is a proposal that has floated around the MLB for quite some time, due to poor performances from some MLB umpires in the past. Some notable names include Angel Hernandez, who was among MLB’s least-accurate umpires according to the site Umpire Scorecards, and more recently, Doug Eddings who missed 18 calls in game four of the American League Championship series in 2023.

Poor umpiring led to an automated ball-strike system (ABS) being introduced in the minor leagues beginning in 2019. They experimented with having a robot making all decisions, as well as having them solely used as a challenge system with human umpires making the initial calls.

The latter is being taken into next year’s spring training, which will be major leagues players’ first introduction to ABS. The systems inclusion in the regular season will largely depend on what the players and their clubs think about it, according to commissioner Rob Manfred. If it is looked upon favourably, the system could be included in regular play as soon as 2026.

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However, in order for that to become a reality, the MLB would have to reach an agreement with the Umpires Association. “We do have a collective bargaining obligation there. That’s obviously a term and condition of employment. We’re going to have to work through that issue, as well,” stated Manfred.

CHALLENGES

During the system’s stint in Triple-A, there was much debate on creating a uniform strike zone. While the robot umpires stick to the strike zone definition from the Official Baseball Rules, which is visualised as a rectangle, human umpires’ strike zones are more of an oval. Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of operations corroborated this, stating “if you looked good at the average zone that’s called in the major leagues and has been called forever, it’s not a rectangle the way that the system calls it.”

Worcester Red Sox manager Chad Tracy offered his two cents after his team played games under the system. “There’s no arguing. Guys get rung up and they think that maybe that wouldn’t have been called with a human calling it, but there’s no yelling about it” Tracy said, later qualifying his statement by adding that “you’re also losing some of the human emotion of the game, and the excitement of it.”

MLB’S MODERNISATION

The inclusion of robot umpires is the latest in MLB’s efforts to modernise the league, with another controversial change having been introduced in the 2023 season, the pitch clock. The rule, established a series of timers which regulates the pace of the game. There is a 30 second timer between each batter, 15 seconds between each pitch while bases are empty, and an 18 second timer with runners on base (this was reduced by two seconds for the 2024 season.

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If the pitcher fails to begin his motion by the time the timer expires, the batter is awarded a ball. If the batter fails to be in the box and ready for a pitch by the eight second mark on the timer, it is an automatic strike.

The rule was introduced as a way to reduce times for MLB games, which averaged a little over three hours per game in 2022. In 2023, games average just below two hours and 40 minutes. This last season saw a further decrease in time, with games averaging two hours and 36 minutes, the lowest game time since 1984.

THE FUTURE OF BASEBALL

The reduced time per game, as well as additional rule changes including restrictions on the infield shift and increasing the sizes of bases, which allowed for increased batting averages and more stolen bases respectively, were pivotal in increasing attendance. And it did just that, with attendance reaching a seven-year high last season with a total of 71,348,366.

It will be interesting to see whether robot umpires have any effect on the MLB’s steady increase in attendance, possibly by creating quicker games due to a lack of argument on pitch calls. However, that will likely come with a full implementation of ABS rather than limiting the system for only challenges. In the second half of the last Triple-A season, each team was limited to three challenges in the Pacific Coast League, and only two in the International League. But, challenges are retained if successful.

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