Technology is great. Or at least it is when it works as expected. If that is not the case, it is the curse of our existence. The same sentiment applies to referees, right? Well, from the 2026 season it seems that we will get a mix of both. Joe Lemire of the Sports Business Journal report That Major League Baseball is expected to vote for the Automated Balls and Strikes Challenge System later today and brings it to MLB in the 2026 season.
For those of you who follow the small competitions a bit, you have probably seen this system in place for a while. The last five seasons it is used at different levels of the minors-inclusive in both Daytona, where the Reds have a single-a-team and in Triple-A where Louisville plays. We even have a taste of it in the Big Leagues in 2025 during the spring training and then in the All-Star game.
However, do not be too compelled with your excitement of the automated zone. MLB is planning to deal with a challenge system instead of “always mentioned by the cameras that follow the pitch” system. There are probably enough reasons for that, but the biggest is that it is what the players prefer. If you want to know why they prefer that I am not sure what to tell you or to whom you should refer, but have challenges what they prefer above the zone called by the cameras at each pitch.
That said, a few times a year I will come across a match in Major League Baseball where the Hawkeye system (which offers all Statcast data, including the Strikezone), simply does not work for a collection or half inning. Although it is rare, it does happen. And they are such situations where the challenge system is better, because you don’t have to stop the game and find out why things don’t work. You can go through and unfortunately just no challenges for that period of 10-20 minutes.
Despite the nocturnal screenshots that you see on social media and repeat a ball with a strike/non-trike with a quarter of centimeters that people lose their mind referees are so much better today to call the strike zone well than before. When we first started keeping track of this stuff in 2008, the calls were not great, but as a baseball America looked at – The improvement has been incredible. There is a specific place outside the zone for left -handed batters who called a strike more than 4000 times in 2009, but this season until the end of June (when this piece was published) it was only called a strike six times. It is still not perfect, and it will probably never be, but referees will do well even if they miss some phone calls.
The system that is being implemented gives each team two challenges per game. Only the pitcher, catcher or Hitter can request a challenge and they must take the decision almost immediately. If a team wins the challenge, they retain that challenge. Teams also receive one challenge for every extra inning of a game, assuming that they no longer have any challenges when that collection is set to start.
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