Robo-Ump challenge system

[Frayed Knot]

... coming to a Spring Training game near you





Where MLB is ultimately heading here is not to full-on Robo Ump but to traditional B/S calls by the HP Ump augmented by limited challenges to be settled by technology.

In testing for The Automated Ball Strike system (ABS) in various minor leagues over the past few seasons there was "a clear preference among fans, players, managers and other personnel for the challenge system" over full (completely automated) ABS. There is apparently also a reluctance among players to do away with catchers' ability to frame pitches.

So 13 ballparks this spring will have the technology in place covering about 60% of all ST games. This will guarantee all teams access to the system for at least some of their games.





The challenge system:

- each team gets to challenge just two pitches per game

- challenges can be made by the batter, catcher, or pitcher ONLY

- challenges must be made immediately and without consultation with dugouts

- the 'Hawk-Eye* Technology' will then show the result to those TV viewers and to those in attendance via the video board

- teams retain any challenge that is overturned in their favor





https://www.mlb.com/news/automated-ball-strike-calls-mlb-spring-gameshttps://www.mlb.com/news/automated-ball-strike-calls-mlb-spring-games







* Hawkeye technology has been providing ball/bat/player tracking data for Statcast since 2019.

They also tried 'Trapper' technology as a sidekick system but abandoned that after just three seasons

[Gwreck]

I saw this in person at an AAA game last year. It worked quite well, with quick results shown on the screen for everyone to see. There were a couple overturned calls for each team, and while it was a small sample size, but all the challenges I saw were coming from the batter (and not the catcher or pitcher).

[Frayed Knot]

Advantages as I see them

- on field and immediate challenges only which eliminates the delay of game as the team makes the decision to challenge the call before you even get to delaying the game for the review itself

- elimination of the ticky-tack call as batters/pitchers/catchers have to use their challenges for 'sure' overturns or for late inning/high-leverage situations. Challenging borderline calls in early innings just doesn't make sense.

[Gwreck]

Agreed. I recall reading that there has been experimentation in the minors with allowing either 2 or 3 overruled challenges per game.



Wouldn't shock me if, when this comes to the MLB level,i it's 2 in regular season games and 3 in the postseason.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Interesting that managers and coaches don't have any say in the matter. A selfish player who doesn't like being called out on strikes in the second inning could blow one of his team's only two challenges. This doesn't mean I think the manager should be involved; the delay of game that would result isn't worth it.

[Fman99]

We saw them use this all year up here in the Cuse. It's pretty effective and the decisions are made quickly.

[Frayed Knot]

Managers, the honest ones anyway, will admit that they can't tell balls and strikes from the dugout. They get a decent view of high or low but not in and out. It's why arguing B/S calls has long been an automatic ejection for managers, the whole idea of claiming you saw it better from 100 ft away than the ump did while set up behind the catcher is a waste of time. The only exception is when Aaron Boone explains/screams to the HP ump that if his players say it's a ball then it's a ball. They're "savages" in that way.

So, yeah, it's good that the dugout won't be involved here.

We saw them use this all year up here in the Cuse. It's pretty effective and the decisions are made quickly.

Any guesstimate as to percentages of batter challenges vs those from Ps + Cs?

[Edgy MD]

I hope this inspires the league to force teams to make all challenges have to be instant, rather than after a manager holds up his hands while a staff of magic elves quickly review the call in the clubhouse.

[MFS62]

We may never see another Greg Maddux -type pitcher, someone who is successful working the black edges of the plate.





Later

[Fman99]

Frayed Knot wrote: Managers, the honest ones anyway, will admit that they can't tell balls and strikes from the dugout. They get a decent view of high or low but not in and out. It's why arguing B/S calls has long been an automatic ejection for managers, the whole idea of claiming you saw it better from 100 ft away than the ump did while set up behind the catcher is a waste of time. The only exception is when Aaron Boone explains/screams to the HP ump that if his players say it's a ball then it's a ball. They're "savages" in that way. So, yeah, it's good that the dugout won't be involved here. We saw them use this all year up here in the Cuse. It's pretty effective and the decisions are made quickly. Any guesstimate as to percentages of batter challenges vs those from Ps + Cs?

I feel like 3/4 of the challenges we saw, at least, were made by batters and not pitchers.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Do you recall any from catchers? I guess it may be hard to tell, from the stands, if the request came from a catcher or a pitcher, but you'd know if the disputed call was a ball, it would have been challenged from the defense.

[duan]

this is a decent implementation.

good points

1. Onus on player - YOU FEEL IT WAS SO BAD - then appeal it! Not brave enough to appeal it then STFU!

2. No delay - this isn't about catching the ones microns away from the strike zone like some of the base running plays feel to be

3. Cuts all ways - each person who is closely involved has the opportunity



bad points?

any break in rhythm is a downside

the old manager ejection can be kind of fun (if tiresome in the main)

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

=MFS62 post_id=185633 time=1740058591 user_id=60]
We may never see another Greg Maddux -type pitcher, someone who is successful working the black edges of the plate.





Later

[MFS62]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: why not? This is baseball as usual with a chance that up to 2 pitches out of the 150 typically thrown in a game, are bad enough calls get challenged.

I'm not considering only called strikes but pitches swung at.

He kept expanding the strike zone and batters swung at borderline/ off the plate pitches because they thought they might be called a strike. He "lived on the black".

And I think with a consistent zone and the opportunity to challenge calls, the batter may be more secure with what they perceive as a strike. So pitchers may stay within the electronic zone.



There are probably some numbers showing percent of pitches swung at with and without the electronic system. But there are very few pitchers with the control of a Maddux to consistently get batters out beyond the strike zone.



Just my impression. We'll have to wait and see.



So, you think there will be another Maddux?

Why?

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

If the batter swings at a pitch, it's going to be a strike even if it's 40 feet out of the strike zone. So I don't see why a batter can't continue to be fooled by a pitch.

[TransMonk]

Make challenge success rate an official player stat!

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, people swing and miss at Edwin Diaz frisbee sliders two and a half feet off the plate.



Fun fact: There are currently at least two minor-league players with the first name Maddux, and perhaps a few dozen more coming up through the high school and college ranks.

[MFS62]

Let me re-phrase.

What specifically about the new electronic strike zone makes you think it will contribute to more pitchers pitching in the Greg Maddux style?



Later

[Frayed Knot]

What happened in the early '90s was that umps started getting complaints from batters over the high strike so they essentially made a compromise and said, 'OK, we'll stop calling that but to compensate we're going to widen the zone and give the pitchers additional room on either side'. Different umps applied that to differing degrees but, in general, the zone started morphing from a vertical rectangle towards a more horizontal one. Livan Hernandez's CG, 3-hit, 15 K game vs Atlanta (and Maddux btw) in the 1997 NLDS, and particularly his final K of Fred McGriff, was the poster child game and pitch for that era. The final strike would maybe have been behind a RH batter and Crime Dog couldn't have hit it with a canoe paddle but that didn't stop HP ump Eric Gregg from calling it.



At this time the umpire union had yet to pull their ill-fated mass resignation strategy so were still very powerful and cohesive, some might even say arrogant. They were also pushing back against the gradual merging of the two leagues and so were taking the attitude that MLB couldn't tell them what to do because they weren't hired by MLB they were hired by the NL or the AL so the by then largely toothless League Presidents were the only ones who could. I remember one saying, quite publicly, that 'just because the ML Rule Book defines a strike this way doesn't mean that's My strike zone'.



So back to Maddux. He and Glavine (and others) were control pitchers with lateral movement on their pitches (Maddux: cutter, Glavine change-up) who took advantage of the wider zone trend because they would have been fools not to. Would they get those same calls now? No, not with the technology that grades umps on every game, and not with a whole new generation of umps who came up in the post-AL/NL era. But they'd still live on the corners and would undoubtedly still be successful in whatever adjustments they'd make. They weren't getting calls that other pitchers didn't also get back then, they were just better and/or smarter than most about taking advantage of the times.



This challenge system, if and when it gets here, isn't going to change much about how pitchers pitch or how hitters react. It's merely going to give the ability to review maybe a half-dozen pitches per game [two for each team plus more for every challenge won] and correct some of them.

[kcmets]

I read there's a panel of scientists and technicians working

on a way to save pitch framing (since it's such a fucking art)

from being totally wiped out by tinkering with mitt-monitoring

as well as the pitch. Crazy stuff, still in developmental stage.

[ashie62]

Can they expand the mitt?



I guess not

[ashie62]

If the ABS system is digitally perfect why should there be any challenges at all?

[batmagadanleadoff]

=ashie62 post_id=185737 time=1740176866 user_id=90]
Can they expand the mitt?



I guess not

[Frayed Knot]

=ashie62 post_id=185738 time=1740177707 user_id=90]
If the ABS system is digitally perfect why should there be any challenges at all?

[Gwreck]

Frayed Knot wrote: preferred by players, managers/coaches, and (supposedly) fans over the one using robo-ump only.

I certainly think the challenge system is better.



What makes you unsure of the data saying fans prefer it?

[Frayed Knot]

I have nothing that tells me fans don't prefer the challenge system but I always question things when being told that an organization knows what a large group of diverse people think about something, particularly when they could already have a preferred outcome in mind (remember that Manfred also us that fans overwhelmingly wanted the ghost runner).

Knowing how players, umps, managers, and execs feel is much easier to discern.

[Gwreck]

Frayed Knot wrote: (remember that Manfred also us that fans overwhelmingly wanted the ghost runner).

I actually am unaware of any such statement.



I know Manfred has said the fans are in favor of shorter games/faster pace of play — but I'm not aware of him claiming that fans overwhelmingly want the ghost runner.



(For the record, I agree that not believing a word out of Manfred's mouth is a good practice).

[Frayed Knot]

When MLB announced the permanent adoption of the ghost runner it became pretty obvious that the reasons/excuses for using it in the previous few seasons

- 2020: it's the Covid year

- 2021: it's the post-Covid year and there are still travel restrictions

- 2022: we need to use it this year too because of a shorter spring training period due to labor strife!!

were nothing more than a lead-up to a decision that had already been made.



And while I probably shouldn't have thrown in 'overwhelmingly', Manfred definitely cited fan approval as one of the reasons for permanence despite offering no proof or data.

[paraphrasing] 'Fans have told us they love this idea ... take our word for it'

[batmagadanleadoff]

Frayed Knot wrote: When MLB announced the permanent adoption of the ghost runner it became pretty obvious that the reasons/excuses for using it in the previous few seasons - 2020: it's the Covid year - 2021: it's the post-Covid year and there are still travel restrictions - 2022: we need to use it this year too because of a shorter spring training period due to labor strife!! were nothing more than a lead-up to a decision that had already been made. And while I probably shouldn't have thrown in 'overwhelmingly', Manfred definitely cited fan approval as one of the reasons for permanence despite offering no proof or data. [paraphrasing] 'Fans have told us they love this idea ... take our word for it'

Bud Selig took a poll and Bud Selig's daughter audited the poll. What more proof of data do you need?

[metirish]

MLB players are giving their new robot umpire overlords a cautious welcome https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/feb/26/mlb-challenge-system-baseball?CMP=share_btn_urlhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/feb/26/mlb-challenge-system-baseball?CMP=share_btn_url



Some thoughts so far