MLB approves robot umpires for 2026 as part of challenge system

> When I watch, I wonder if the referee has accepted a bribe every time a call is a little funky.

As someone that has been a soccer (makes me throw up a little to say that word), ahem, football referee, I can tell you that not all funky calls are because the ref is rigging the game. Sometimes, you just miss stuff. Sometimes, you just see it differently. Sometimes, you just fuck up. Yes, a few have definitely admitted to taking bribes. Granted, I never was an official on anything professional. Even still, you'd make a call and the fans of the team you call a foul against all go crazy. Two minutes later, you make a call going the other way, and the other fans go nuts. I always laughed when I'd hear comments about needing glasses and "how much they pay you". You can't make 100% happy, ever. Fan is short for fanatic, and it's very appropriate.

To that end, I'm surprised that MLB never introduced replays. Cricket has replays and even have microphones that they watch the waveforms to see if there was contact or not.

It was mentioned elsewhere in the thread but this article is relevant: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/guardians-reliever-emmanu...

The ability to bet on short term individual events (such as a single pitch) means that even a single pitch, otherwise nearly inconsequential, can be abused.

We're so far from The Sandlot the game has lost all passion. (Go A's)

The current state is such first-order thinking. When will we be able to bet on whether or not the umps have taken a bribe?

How did you come to that conclusion that this is a function of betting? As a baseball fan, this feels like a long overdue feature (at least in the world of video review challenge). I think it's simply going to make the game better. MLB is losing to the NFL/NBA, and they need to put out a better product.

Yeah - I like how no one ever talks about Tim Donaghy

It’s sort of been swept under the rug even though it was initially reported on

Professional NBA referee betting on games he was refereeing - what a joke

Is sports betting new?

It is almost impossible to fully remove that voice in the back of your head that will question if you were cheated. Because the fact is at the end of the day sports are played by humans and humans make mistakes, humans are susceptible to bribes, humans are susceptible to threats and there are many other factors that could influence or force cheating by players or bad calls by the officials.

There are literally countless incidents of people cheating. So my suggestion is to hope it doesn't happen but also just avoid making bets if you are not comfortable with the fact that you may lose.

I started watching baseball 5 years ago when I had a roommate who loves the Red Sox. I don't have cable at home so I cant say Im a true fan or anything; but if its on and I happen to be in front of a TV, Im content watching a game.

At the time, every umpire had their own strike box, and I loved it! It added variance to the pitches and swings each game. Some batters would turn their head and confirm with the umpire where one edge of the box was when they called a strike (and others would silently curse without turning their head haha)

No, I'm with you. And maybe it's just because I'm an old man, but this is another place where joy and wonder (meaning arguing with friends lol) are replaced with data. It just sucks some of the fun out.

The quest for eternal optimization is exhausting.

In a very literal sense a non-trivial part of the entertainment value of sports has been taken from you. I don't think it's ridiculous at all, I think the people making the decisions to have computer accurate refs don't understand what makes sports fun to watch holistically.

Cricket has already been through this and it has only improved the game and made it more fair.

This obscures the fact that umpires are worse than 93% when the pitch is close to the boundary of being a ball or a strike (shadow zone). Obvious balls and obvious strikes are obvious, but umpire accuracy when it is close is only 81%, and their accuracy was even worse 15 years ago.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/strike-three-lets-check-in-on-um...

There’s universal agreement that DRS has massively improved cricket, but the sport was already using technology for decision-making well before DRS. In fact, Hawk-Eye was first used in cricket before gaining popularity with tennis. I’d go as far as to say cricket has been the best adopter of technology in sports for a long time.

It's a net positive but wide/no-ball DRS slows down the game a lot.

Look at it from the other direction. If there was a contest between two athletes or teams and it was adjudicated without bias, would you think "You know what would give this more soul? A flawed judge with poorer vision, who may or may not have been pressured or baited before the game to influence their decisions!"

Review systems for cricket and tennis seem to have enabled more crowd involvement and anticipation in the lead up to a decision being revealed.

If the viewers didn't know it was a blown call, there wouldn't be a problem. That's how baseball worked for 100 years.

But now when the viewers can see the pitch in 1000fps 8K slow motion, they expect better from the umpires. The entire premise of sports relies on the assumption that the rules are adjudicated correctly.

Bad calls are not “soul”. There’s plenty of flair and tradition and flavor in baseball.

if a baseball is the width of two or three baseballs away from the "zone" (dynamic based on player usually), then providing a way to challenge the call (it was called a strike when it is clearly a ball) is completely fair and retains the soul of the game. Baseball is really a game of fairness. There's no "buzzer beaters" or timed sessions. Everyone has their chance per inning to impact the game. In a game of relative fairness, adding more strict honesty when it comes to something like this will only improve the game.

I'm a huge fan of the automatic balls and strikes challenge system baseball is going to adopt.

Awful calls need to be struck from the game and this should do that. Tonight my Blue Jays had a double taken away on a foul call and a ball 2 inches off the plate called a strike in the same at bat with the bases loaded. Between this and the horrible reviews last week it feels like the fix is by MLB to keep us from winning the division.

Unlike tennis where in and out have always been strictly defined and we just didn't have the technology to enforce it, baseball has always involved the human element to the strike zone and some umpire judgement on whether the pitcher hit the spot or just got lucky and what a given batter's zone is. I want some of that to stay, with catchers holding game-long discussions about the zone with umpires, and batters having their own sense of the zone.

I don't want full automatic balls and strikes, so I like the challenge. There is some new strategy on when to deploy it and who can be trusted to recognize a missed call. It leaves some room for a pitcher and catcher to work a corner over a few innings to expand little by little.

I think as long as they use the limited challenge system, framing skills can still co-exist and matter.

I only hope they don't switch to a system entirely governed by an automated strike zone without umps.

It'll allow the "human element" many players still prefer along with some level of framing, while keeping umps honest (there are way too many egregious calls these days).

'robot' meaning 'automated/non-human', a common English idiom especially in non-technical contexts

I'm only a casual baseball viewer, but balls and strikes are so easy to see on TV and the umpires miss a lot of obvious calls. It makes a lot of sense to make this a game mechanic that is managed by the machine, rather than requiring humans to judge this. Humans are still judging baserunning and the more subjective aspects of the game.

I'll also note that MLB isn't doing the "replace umpires with software". Teams get 2 challenges to use, and those are adjudicated by robots. The initial call is made by humans and a human has to say "use my finite resource to engage the robots". (I would just make all calls by robot and have a challenge to have humans look at it, but whatever. Baby steps. We know where this is going.)

The NFL uses the same technology to measure first downs now. No more carrying the chains out to measure by hand. But the officials still spot the ball where they think they play ended, so the computer isn't doing anything important. It's just doing the tedious part.

Nobody is losing their job and no fun is being removed from the game.

If this is a joke, sorry, I'm just tired of it.

If it's not a joke, please realize this doesn't replace anyone and is also not doing anything that's meaningfully "AI".