An Explanation of In-Game Pitching Moves?

[MFS62]

From Rotoworld:
The Athletic reports MLB has “effectively outlawed” using dugout iPads to access generative artificial intelligence.
“Some teams” had increasingly leaned upon AI to help shape in-game strategy, which explains why your team’s favorite manager keeps going to that one reliever you don’t like. The Athletic’s Eno Sarris believes “pitch-calling from the dugout may be at the center of this battle, and is one of the usages the league appears to be targeting,” the practice lead by the Marlins this year has now spread to as many as six other teams. MLB had let teams know in a memo issued on June 11, to give teams a month of leeway before adopting the ban

I wonder if the Mets have been one of those teams using AI.

Thoughts?

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

I don't see the need for a ban.

[MFS62]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Grimm said:

I don't see the need for a ban.

Right. 
they didn’t ban pcs when Davey Johnson used one in the dugout, did they? You had to be intelligent to build and use a PC database. But AI does all the thinking.

Can that be the difference?
later

[Edgy MD]

Davey Johnson didn't use PCs in the dugout.

He brought data with him into the dugout, and had written on index cards that Rusty Staub (for example) was 1-for-10 against a certain pitcher, but that's a different thing.

[Benjamin Grimm]

AI is more advanced than Davey Johnson's PC software, but it's still the same thing, just to a different degree. Which is to be expected, it's 42 years later.

Davey's PC would tell him how well Mookie Wilson does against a certain pitcher. But it couldn't guarantee that Mookie would get a hit or an out. AI could tell Andy Green where Bryce Harper is likely to hit a pitch thrown by Sean Manaea, but again, there's no certainty in that prediction.

[MFS62]

Quote

When he became a manager in the Mets’ system and then for the Mets themselves, Johnson brought such thinking plus his computer into his clubhouse and dugout. 

https://throneberryfields.com/2025/09/12/davey-johnson-rip-forward-thinker-with-old-school-soul/

 

I remember seeing a picture of him with the PC in the dugout, but maybe that was just shot to accompany an article about his PC use.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Can anybody please show me a photo of Davey Johnson operating a PC in a Mets dugout?

[Benjamin Grimm]

How about in the manager's office?

[Edgy MD]

That is long-established and certainly not contested.

But thank you.

[MFS62]

Back to the original theme,  teams started using tablets in the dugout around 2015. So how can MLB police this ruling? How can they know whether someone in the dugout is using their own compiled information vs AI when they use a tablet?

Are they going to put a keystroke tracker in those tablets?

And the second question: do you think the Mets have been using AI?

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

I imagine all teams are using it to one extent or another. Maybe not in-game however.

If the Mets aren't using it, they should give it a try. And if they are, they should stop. Whatever they're doing isn't working.

[Edgy MD]

MLB has long limited what teams have access to on their tablets, including no Internet accessing and no live communications.

[The Hot Corner]

45 minutes ago, MFS62 said:

And the second question: do you think the Mets have been using AI?

Later

Many of the decisions the Mets have made over the past year do not appear to have been based on intelligence, whether human or AI.