Robot Umpires are Here. But do they Make Baseball Better?

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

If you’re a baseball fan, odds are you’ve probably been upset at the umpires calling your favorite team’s game on more than one occasion. That fraction of an inch between a ball and a strike is a skill that almost nobody can do at the level of a Major League umpire, and even they get it wrong sometimes. But now, those calls can be handled by the Automatic Ball-Strike System, or to put it more simply… robot umps. But as the league begins to embrace automation, we find ourselves asking: is this all really worth it? Jeff Passan has seen ABS in action in the minor leagues this season, and he explains why this shift is about more than just balls and strikes…and if human error in baseball might not be the bug we think it is after all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	ESPN Daily is presented by YouTube TV. Try it free today at youtube.com slash NBA 23 new
0:11.3	users only terms apply cancel anytime. Jeff passing, I'm not surprised by this at all,
0:19.0	but I understand you've been spending a lot of time around minor league games these days.
0:23.1	Yeah, you know, minor leagues are pretty much where I belong. So might as well take in some
0:30.6	of the sights and sounds. Well, while standing or sitting where you belong, there was one
0:35.7	particular at Batu witness that I'm kind of curious about. Can you tell me what you saw?
0:41.4	I was in Charlotte, North Carolina, is he watching the Charlotte nights take on the Durham
0:50.2	Bulls? And I was there to see Liam Hendrix, the Chicago White socks closer who was diagnosed
0:57.7	with stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was making his comeback. And Liam Hendrix was in the
1:09.9	late innings of a game and there was one out and two strikes. And he threw an exceptional pitch.
1:20.2	It was 95 miles per hour. It was on the outside corner to a right-handed batter. It was thigh high.
1:27.6	It was perfect. And the batter just stood there frozen. And I was expecting to hear the
1:37.5	umpire say strike three two outs game almost over. And then there was silence.
1:49.2	And that silence was surprising to me because it looked like a great pitch.
1:55.5	It looked like a perfect pitch. But there was one problem, is he? And that problem was that it was
2:09.7	Thursday. And you would think that the day of the week should have nothing to do with whether a pitch
2:19.9	is called a ball or a strike. But at AAA this year major league baseball is running an experiment.
2:29.0	And that experiment is going to potentially shape the future of what big league games look like.
2:39.6	On Tuesday through Thursday, all AAA games, balls and strikes are being adjudicated fully
2:49.2	by the automated ball strike system for MLB. In other words, robot umpires are making all the calls.
2:59.2	And on Friday through Sunday, every game is using that automated system. But they're doing it with
3:06.9	the twist where umpires behind home plate are making all of the calls. But if a player doesn't like
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