Fans of Major League Baseball have debated whether robotic umpires should make their way to MLB for years. Commissioner Rob Manfred has opened up more about the possibility in recent days.
Manfred admitted to The Athletic the MLB is looking to implement automatic ball-and-strike calling technology. He called the implementation of such technology “the next big one that’s on the agenda.”
Manfred also shed some light on what the robot umps actually entail. There won't be a literal robot umpire, as some may have believed. The MLB commissioner cleared up what he called a misnomer.
“There’s no robot. The umpire has an earpiece, it tells him what to call, he calls it just like he calls it today. It looks the same for the fan,” Manfred told The Athletic.
The MLB commissioner told The Athletic that accuracy is a major sticking point. “I held this belief for a really long time: if we could get a system that was … accurate to a tenth of an inch on every pitch, that everyone would carry us around on a big gold chair,” he said.
Now, automatic balls-and-strikes technology is that accurate. That opens the door for its implementation at the major league level. However, the MLB is introducing a pitch clock this year. And last year saw the introduction of the PitchCom technology.
With these new technologies, a 2024 introduction of an automatic strike-calling system remains a bit unknown. “I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward,” Manfred said. “I’m trying to get through this year’s change. We have some work to do, I think, on ABS.”
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