At
part 1
of our triptych on The Future of Baseball we looked at new rules to make the sport more attractive. In this episode, we set our sights on an innovation designed to make sport more equitable, namely the Automated Ball-Strike System – ABS for short, but popularly called “robot umps” on a regular basis .
Grumbling at the umpire is part of baseball as “peanuts and cracker jacks,” but that may soon be a thing of the past. Major League Baseball, in fact, has been testing an automated system for batting and fielding balls for years, and it seems a matter of time before we start seeing this system at the highest level. What does this innovation mean for the future of sport?
HAWK-EYE & VAR
In 2006, the Hawk-Eye system was introduced in tennis. From then on, players could deploy a number of challenges per set to challenge (in their view wrong) decisions. So in that sport, such an automated system has been used for nearly 20 years, and the response has been generally positive.
Unfortunately, we cannot say that about the comparable VAR (Video Assistant Referee) in soccer. All too often after a game day the talk is about remarkable decisions made by the men in the dumpster on the stadium sidewalk, but then again, they are often based on interpretation. In that regard, the Automated Ball-Strike System in baseball would be more like the Hawk-Eye used in tennis. After all, whether a pitch went through the strike zone can be determined with the same certainty under a properly functioning system as being in or out of a tennis ball.
CHALLENGES?
So that ABS is actually coming seems all but certain, only its details remain unclear for now. Are all pitches going to be called by these so-called “robot umps” or will the initial decision – as in tennis – still basically be made by the umpire behind the plate and can then be challenged by a manager, batter or fielder? In the latter case, there would remain a tactical component, because what does a manager put at stake with it and when do you deploy your challenge?
Currently in experiments in the Minor Leagues, it is the case that a batter may indicate by tapping his helmet that he is challenging a decision, while a catcher may also do so.
https://x.com/FutureSox/status/1774141766733602899?s=20
So it remains to be seen when and how ABS will be implemented, but that it will eventually make the sport a lot fairer seems a certainty. That refereeing decisions will start to play less of a role in the outcome of a game will be welcomed by most people, but secretly we will miss the furious tantrums of players like Kyle Schwarber anyway, so one more time to unlearn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzE0LGb6xLw