MLB to Implement Automated Ball-Strike System in 2026: What It Means for Baseball

Major League Baseball announced that starting in 2026, the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) will be implemented at the major league level.

The system is pretty simple. Each team will receive two challenges per game; however, if a team successfully challenges, they will retain that challenge. The player taps their hat or helmet, and the play is instantly reviewed using Hawkeye camera technology, currently employed in tennis, to determine whether the pitch will be upheld or not.

Also to note, the inside and outside borders of the strike zone will be determined by the width of the plate, and the top and bottom of the zone will be between 53.5% of the player's height and 27% of their height.

This will be a mostly positive addition to baseball, but my one concern is that in the future, umpires may be removed from the sport. Part of what makes baseball so great is that pitchers and catchers can “trick the umpire.” Of course, when you see that incorrect ball or strike pop up on your screen, and the call goes against your team, you might begin to look more favorably towards robo umpires.

However, I appreciate having players like Austin Hedges in baseball.

If you look at Hedges’s slash line (.147/.240/.267), you might feel that this is a horrible baseball player. You might not be entirely wrong. He’s been one of the worst-qualified hitters in baseball since he arrived in Cleveland in 2020. However, the way he’s able to steal runs with his framing and raise the floor of an okay Cleveland pitching staff is nearly immeasurable.

In his last seven starts, Cleveland pitchers have given up only 5 runs and struck out 70 batters over 63 innings of work. If robot umpires are entirely in charge of games, I just don’t see the same value in Hedges. On the other hand, if the ABS remains only a challenge system, a player like Hedges might provide even more value by being one of the better users of the challenge system.

This isn’t something that MLB can ever take away; they can only ever add to this from now on. If ABS remains as a challenge system, I think this is an effective way to address egregious missed calls by umpires, without impacting the pace of play in the game. If this marks the beginning of fully integrating robo-umpires, I will be the first to say that I was against ABS. We will just have to see how MLB uses this moving forward.