Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, March 20th,

2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. It's no secret that baseball has been

resistant to change for much of its century plus long history,

not that you could tell from the last few years.

Major League Baseball under the tutelage of Commissioner Rob Manfred has seen shifts on everything

from the addition of a pitch clock to the universal designated hitter and even changes to extra innings rules.

So are robot umpires next?

Major League Baseball this spring

experimented with a new system that could radically shift how the game is called. If officials

deem it successful, a challenge system for balls and strikes using automated technology

might arrive in the regular season as soon as next year. For more on the tech and its potential

impact on America's favorite pastime,

I'm now joined by USA Today MLB reporter Gabe Lacks. Gabe, thank you so much for hopping on.

Thanks for having me, Taylor. So Gabe, let's just start with this system itself. How does this

automated ball strike system or ABS work and how it challenges within this system function?

It's kind of low tech in a sense because

well there's no flag to throw or anything like that. The only people who can challenge are the pitcher,

the batter and the catcher on a given pitch. And so they simply will turn to the home plate umpire

and tap the side of their head. And then the umpire walks away from home plate

and kind of looks up at the press box toward the official score and sort of who gives them a signal

that the previous pitch is being challenged. Then he makes an announcement to the crowd as such.

And then there's a person hooked up to this automatic ball strike system that's charting every pitch.

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