Robot umpires to call balls, strikes in Triple-A in 2022

Major League Baseball's automated strike-zone experiment will be adopted in 2022 by the highest level of the minor leagues, Triple-A, according to The Associated Press.

The Automated Ball and Strike system (ABS) has been in development for years and was used in the Atlantic League beginning in 2019. Now it'll be implemented in Triple-A, but that doesn't mean that human umpires will disappear behind home plate.

The technology will determine whether a pitch was a ball or strike, and the call will be fed to the umpire via an earpiece. The umpire will relay the call to the players and still be responsible for other calls at home plate.

While the ABS system hasn't yet been adopted by the major leagues, the decision to use it in Triple-A has the league on the verge of a new era of umpiring.

“It’s hard to handicap if, when or how it might be employed at the major league level, because it is a pretty substantial difference from the way the game is called today,” MLB chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak said in March 2020, via the AP.