May 17 was a red-letter day for Pacific Coast League baseball, and Josh Suchon had his antenna up.
As the play-by-play man for the Albuquerque Isotopes, the Rockies’ Triple-A farm team, Suchon was aware that he was witnessing baseball’s future. For the first time, balls and strikes were being called by a computer program during a PCL game..
More than three months later, “Robo Umps” — officially called the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) — have faded into the background at Isotopes games.
“Most fans are oblivious that a computer is calling balls and strikes instead of an umpire,” Suchon said with a laugh. “You know how I can tell? The fans are still yelling at the umpire. That goes to show you how seamless it is.”
But that’s not to say that there aren’t bugs to be worked out as Major League Baseball approaches its next technological leap. Plus, there are alternatives to be considered and likely controversy ahead before MLB fully commits to using robot umps.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he could see ABS in place at the major league level as early as 2024. He’s mentioned two possibilities: a) have the computer call all of the balls and strikes or b) leave the home plate umpire in charge of calling balls and strikes but institute a challenge system whereby each team would have a limited number of chances to contest a ball/strike call during the game.
“We hear all the time from players, ‘Why don’t we have an electronic strike zone?’ Well, we try to be responsive to those sorts of expressions of concern,” Manfred told The Athletic. “We have spent a lot of time and money on the technology. It’s not just to address player concerns. It obviously has broadcasting uses. That same technology can be used in our broadcasts, which has value to our fans.”
But there are many in the game who don’t want the human element to be replaced by a machine.
Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw, a future Hall of Famer, has said he’s opposed to robot umps. So is Rockies right-hander German Marquez, who likes jawing with the men behind the plate.
“It would be weird,” Marquez said. “I think we’re going to lose some of the essentials of baseball. Sometimes you fight with the umpire. I like that. I would miss that.”
Rockies manager Bud Black, 65, is proudly old-school in a lot of ways. As a major-league player, coach, and manager, he’s lived with his share of controversial calls, including in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series.
Don Denkinger blew a call that stands as one of the biggest umpiring mistakes in baseball history. The Cardinals held a 1-0 lead and were three outs away from raising the trophy when Denkinger, the first-base umpire, ruled Royals pinch hitter Jorge Orta safe. TV replays clearly showed that pitcher Todd Worrell, taking a flip throw from first baseman Jack Clark, won the race to the bag. The blown call gave the Royals life, setting the stage for a two-run rally that sent the series to Game 7, which the Royals won.
Nearly 37 years later, Black, who was warming up in the Royals bullpen at the time, is on board with robot umps.
“I think it’s like anything in this modern era of our culture,” he said. “Technology is becoming so good that I think it makes sense. I was originally reluctant about replay because I think that the human element is part of the game. But in the spirit of true competition, it makes sense.”
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Major league umpires, as never before, are open to criticism because they operate in an age when high-speed video cameras enable broadcasters and fans to dissect every pitch.
In reality, the umps get most of it right.
During the first half of the season, according to UmpireScorecards.com, Jeremie Rehak and Pat Hoberg were the most accurate home plate umpires, getting 95.6% of balls-and-strikes calls correct. Among umpires who have worked more than one game calling balls and strikes, Andy Fletcher (91.4%) and CB Bucknor (91.7%) were the least accurate.
Black said that during a recent game, he had issues with about 10 out of the 150 pitches his pitchers threw, 6.7%.
Still, the demand for perfection exists and technology is in place to lessen the margin of error.
ABS works by using the Hawk-Eye tracking system that’s installed in every major-league ballpark. A computer program determines whether a pitch is a ball or a strike and that information is relayed to the home-plate umpire who wears an earpiece into which a computer-generated voice tells him the call. If the technology fails, the umpire calls balls and strikes.
“It’s almost instantaneous, the umpire gets the call in a flash,” Suchon said. “That was one of my questions going it. But it’s very fast and that’s what feeds into fans not even knowing there is a computer making the call.”
Former Rockies outfielders Cory Sullivan and Ryan Spilborghs, both of whom work as analysts for AT&T SportsNet, prefer a different route.
“We want a version of the ABS, but it wouldn’t be fully automatic,” Spilborghs said. “We want a challenge system.”
Spilborghs advocates that each team would have five balls-and-strikes challenges per game. Sullivan wants eight.
“The idea is that the umpire still calls ball and strikes, but if there is a borderline call, there can be a challenge,” Sullivan said. “The automated system has already alerted the umpire if it’s a ball or a strike. It would take no time at all.”
Last season, the low-A Florida State League, which is being used as a pilot program by MLB, employed the ABS full-time. This season, the league uses the robot umps in the first two games of each series, then has a human call ball and strikes in the remaining game with a challenge system. Each team gets three challenges and keeps its challenge if successful. Only the pitcher, catcher or batter may appeal, not the manager.
“I would love that,” Astros ace Justin Verlander told The Associated Press. “These (umpires) get a lot of flak, but they have one of the hardest jobs in the world. We’re throwing 100 mph, nicking corners. If I were an umpire, I like that: ‘Oh, you think you’re better than me? Appeal it and find out.’ I think it’s a fun back and forth.”
Rockies players who have played in games utilizing ABS have some major issues with it.
The first is that ABS creates a bigger strike zone because every pitch that clips the strike zone is called a strike. That has not gone over well with some hitters in the PCL.
“I wish there was more of, ‘You have to have X percentage of the ball that crosses the zone for it to be a strike,” said Rockies left fielder Kris Bryant, who did a rehab stint with the Isotopes earlier this season. “Because the ones that just nick the corner, that’s the gray area. As a pitcher, you’re like, ‘maybe it’s a strike?’ And as a hitter you’re like, ‘I don’t know either.’ ”
Left-hander Austin Gomber said there needs to be a better definition of what constitutes the strike zone.
“Technically, it’s supposed to be the letters to the knees, but everyone knows that it’s not actually been the letters to the knees for the past 50 years,” Gomber said. “If we are going to implement an automated strike zone, we are going to have to have black and white on what it is.”
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The width of home plate is 17 inches, and the official strike zone is the area over home plate from the midpoint between a batter’s shoulders and the top of the uniform pants — when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball — and a point just below the kneecap. In order to get a strike called, part of the ball must cross over part of home plate while in the aforementioned area.
In practice, of course, the width is sometimes extended an inch or two off of both corners of the plate. Plus, the actual top of the strike zone is not regularly called a strike. There are other variables as well, depending on who’s behind the plate and what the pitch count is. Studies have shown that with a 3-0 pitch, umps are more likely to call a close pitch a strike, and often call an 0-2 pitch a ball.
ABS does adjust for each hitter, creating a strike zone based on a hitter’s height and usual crouch at the plate. That way, 6-foot-7 Yankees slugger Aaron Judge has a different zone than Astros 5-foot-6 second baseman Jose Altuve.
During ABS’s test run in the Florida State League last season, there were a lot of walks early in the season, and not just because young pitchers tend to be wild at the low-A level. So the league changed the automated strike zone midseason, widening it by two inches on each side of the plate.
MLB has acknowledged it will have to explore the transition between a human strike zone and an automated zone because they’re not the same. MLB’s Competition Committee would have to approve any changes to the strike zone.
Perhaps lost in the conversation is the fact that robot umpires would eliminate pitch framing, one of a catcher’s most valued skills. Rockies catcher Dom Nunez would hate to see pitch framing become obsolete.
“My goal is to stay in the big leagues and framing is still an important skill,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, so it’s become pretty secondary to me. I would hate not being able to get a call for your pitcher.”
But like it or loathe it, robot umpires, in some form, are coming to Major League Baseball.
Count Rockies outfielder Sam Hilliard, who experienced the automatic strike zone firsthand earlier this season in Triple-A, as a skeptic.
“I don’t think it would be received well by a lot of people at first, but I don’t think there is a way where everybody is going to be happy,” he said.
Black looks at baseball’s high-tech future with a mixture of nostalgia and realism.
“We don’t see the manager running out to second base to argue a call anymore,” he said. “We don’t see Earl Weaver kicking dirt on home plate. That’s all gone. Is that progress? I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t want baseball to be stuck in the mud.”
