Triple-A games will now exclusively use the automated Ball Strike Challenge system

June 18, 2024

When an electronic ball-striking system makes its way into the major leagues sometime in the next few years, it won’t be used for every pitch. Major League Baseball made that clear Tuesday when it sent a memo to all 30 teams informing them that starting next week, electronic ball-striking technology will be switched to a challenge system only in Triple-A games.

The memo was originally obtained and reported on by ESPN.

The automated ball striking system, known as ABS, has been in use in Triple A since the start of last season. However, as part of this experiment, the technology was only used in three games per week to call each pitch. The challenge system was used in the other three games per week.

But The athlete As reported last summer, players, coaches and minor league staff expressed vehement dissatisfaction with the way the full-time ABS operates. And last month, Commissioner Rob Manfred signaled that change by saying he was in favor of using a challenge system that results in only a handful of ball-strike challenges per game.

At the quarterly owners’ meeting, the commissioner said, “Those who have played with it prefer the challenge system to ABS, which calls every pitch. And that has certainly changed our ideas about where we could go.”

The league then surveyed players and staff in Triple A this season. In its memo to clubs, the league said 61 percent of respondents favored the challenge system, while only 11 percent favored using ABS on every pitch. The other 28 percent favored having human umpires call all balls and strikes.

MLB also surveyed spectators at Triple-A games and found that twice as many fans favored the challenge system than those who favored full-time ABS.

Starting next week, the league will use Triple-A games to find out which challenge system works best. In the Pacific Coast League, teams will receive three challenges per game as before – and keep their challenge if they are correct. In the International League, however, teams will only receive two challenges per game – but will also keep their challenge if they are correct.

In its memo, MLB said the International League reduction was essentially an experiment to see if fewer challenges could “reduce the frequency of challenging games.” Nearly 40 percent of Triple-A games featured more than six challenges. In polls, 89 percent of fans said they would prefer no more than six challenges — and 53 percent said three or four would be ideal.

However, baseball in the lower-level minor leagues will continue to experiment with full-time ABS. In a memo to minor league teams and departments, MLB said the Low-A Florida State League will continue to use electronic ball striking technology full-time on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as it has done in recent years. On Friday through Sunday, that league will use the challenge system. Florida State League teams will continue to have three challenges per game.

At the owners’ meetings, Manfred said it was unlikely that MLB would be ready to use any form of electronic ball striking technology by next season. However, industry sources have said The athlete that the league is committed to overcoming ABS’s technological challenges in time to roll out the system to the major leagues by 2026, if all goes well.

However, Tuesday’s memo indicated that if the robot referees do indeed arrive in 2026, they will almost certainly be used only to correct the worst errors – using a correction system similar to the one now used for slow-motion replays.