“Robo-referees now?” MLB commissioner hints at debut in spring training 2025

Fans today are calling for a computerized version of the strike zone to replace human referees, especially when a borderline call turns out to be wrong during a televised broadcast.

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The calls have only grown louder since advances in automatic ball striking (ABS) technology have led to this technology being adopted in all lower leagues.

Starting June 25, all Triple-A games fell under the ABS Challenge System. Instead of the “robo-referee” being the final judge on every ball and strike call, the Challenge System gives teams a limited number of balls and strikes to have reviewed by the Hawk-Eye system each game. Teams keep the challenge if they are successful.

Of course, whenever the intricacies of technology in the minor leagues come to mind, one question quickly comes to mind: When will it come to the major leagues?

Commissioner Rob Manfred gave perhaps his clearest hint yet about a potential timeline. In a 1-on-1 interview with Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News, Manfred clearly indicated that the technology is closer to being implemented at the major league level than ever before.

“I have been meeting with players for three years and discussing this issue with them again and again,” said Manfred. “I think it is quite clear that the players prefer the challenge system. And we will let the players guide us on this matter.”

“As far as timing goes, I can tell you this: We have the technology down pat,” Manfred continued. “It’s good. We’ve got the trajectory of the baseball down to the hundredth of an inch. It’s a really robust technology. There are certain technical issues related to defining the strike zone and things like that that we’re still working on. I hope we’ll make progress on that in the second half of the season. As far as (implementation), you can draw your own conclusions from that: Before we go live in a big league game, we’ll do a spring training test with major league players.”

If the MLB succeeds in overcoming the remaining technical hurdles in the ABS system this year, there appears to be nothing standing in the way of an MLB Spring Training test in 2025.

Manfred did not say if and how a grace period would follow between spring training testing and the start of the regular season. Perhaps the league wants more than the usual six-week spring training period to gather feedback from players, referees and others before the full kickoff in 2025.

In any case, it sounds like the wish of fans hoping for some kind of electronic refereeing system to eliminate the “human factor” that has long been sacred in baseball will soon come true.