Robot umpires to be used at MLB All Star Game for first time

Tarik Skubal views the strike zone differently than robot umpires.

“I have this thing where I think everything is a strike until the umpire calls it a ball,” Detroit’s AL Cy Young Award winner said ahead of his start for the American League in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.

MLB has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in the minor leagues since 2019 and will use it in an All-Star Game for the first time this summer. Each team gets two challenges and retains the challenge if it is successful.

“Pitchers think everything is a strike. Then you go back and look at it, and it’s two, three balls off,” Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes, starting his second straight All-Star Game for the National League, said Monday. “We should not be the ones that are challenging it.”

MLB sets the top of the automated strike zone at 53.5% of a batter’s height and the bottom at 27%, basing the decision on the midpoint of the plate, 8 1/2 inches from the front and 8 1/2 inches from the back. That contrasts with the rule book zone called by umpires, which says the zone is a cube.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred anticipates the system will be considered by the sport’s 11-man competition committee, which includes six management representatives.

Many pitchers have gravitated to letting their catchers and managers trigger ball/strike appeals. Teams won 52.2% of their challenges during the spring training test. Batters won exactly 50% of their 596 challenges and the defense 54%, with catchers successful 56% of the time and pitchers 41%.

Hall of Famer Joe Torre, an honorary AL coach, favors the system. After his managing career, he worked for MLB and helped supervised expanded video review in 2014.

“You couldn’t ignore it with all the technology out there,” he said. “You couldn’t sit and make an excuse for, ‘Look at what really happened’ the next day.”



(AP Photo Carolyn Kaster)