ATLANTA — Cal Raleigh was just as successful with the first robot umpire All-Star challenge as he was in the Home Run Derby.
Seattle’s catcher signaled for an appeal to the Automated Ball-Strike System in the first inning of the National League’s win Tuesday night, getting a strikeout for Detroit’s Tarik Skubal on San Diego’s Manny Machado.
“You take ‘em any way you can get ’em, boys,” Skubal said on the mound.
Four of five challenges of plate umpire Dan Iassogna’s calls were successful in the first All-Star use of the ABS system, which could make its regular-season debut next year.
Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson won as the first batter to call for a challenge, reversing a 1-0 fastball from Washington’s MacKenzie Gore in the fifth inning that had been called a strike.
Miami’s Kyle Stowers lost when ABS upheld a full-count Andrés Muñoz fastball at the bottom of the zone for an inning-ending strikeout in the eighth.
Mets closer Edwin Díaz earned a three-pitch strikeout against Randy Arozarena to end the top of the ninth on a pitch Iassogna thought was outside.
Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk used ABS to get a first-pitch strike on a 100.1 mph Aroldis Chapman offering to Brendan Donovan with two outs in the bottom half.
“The fans enjoy it. I thought the players had fun with it,” NL manager Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers said. “There’s a strategy to it, if it does get to us during the season. But I like it. I think it’s good for the game.”
Skubal had given up Ketel Marte’s two-run double and retired the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman on a groundout for his first out when he got ahead of Machado 0-2 in the count. Skubal threw a 89.5 mph changeup, and Iassogna yelled” “Ball down!”
Raleigh tapped his helmet just before Skubal tipped his cap, triggering a review by the computer umpire that was tested in spring training this year and could be adopted for regular-season use in 2026.
“Obviously, a strike like that it was, so I called for it and it helped us out,” Raleigh said.
An animation of the computer analysis was shown on the Truist Park scoreboard and the broadcast. Roberts laughed in the dugout after the challenge.
“I knew it was a strike,” Machado said.
Skubal doesn’t intend to use challenges during regular-season games if the ABS is put in place. He says he’ll rely on his catchers.
“I was joking around that I was going to burn two of them on the first balls just so that way we didn’t have them the rest of the game,” he said. “I’m just going to assume that it’s going to happen next year.”
Before the game, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred indicated the sport’s 11-man competition committee will consider the system for next season.
“I think the ability to correct a bad call in a high-leverage situation without interfering with the time of game because it’s so fast is something we ought to continue to pursue,” Manfred said.
ABS decisions may have an error of margin up to a half-inch.
“Our guys do have a concern with that half inch, what that might otherwise lead to particularly as it relates to the number of challenges you may have, whether you keep those challenges during the course of the game,” union head Tony Clark told the Baseball Writers Association of America. “Does there need to be some type of buffer zone consideration? Or do we want to find ourselves in a world where it’s the most egregious misses that we want focus in on?”
Manfred sounded less concerned.
“I don’t believe that technology supports the notion that you need a buffer zone,” he said. “To get into the idea that there’s something that is not a strike that you’re going to call a strike in a review system, I don’t know why I would want to do that.”
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.
“We haven’t even started talking about the strike zone itself, how that’s going to necessarily be measured, and whether or not there are tweaks that need to be made there, too,” Clark said. “So there’s a lot of discussion that still needs to be had, despite the fact that it seems more inevitable than not.”
Manfred has tested ABS in the minor leagues since 2019, using it for all pitches and then switching to a challenge system. Each team gets two challenges and a successful challenge is retained. Only catchers, batters and pitchers can call for a challenge.
“Where we are on ABS has been fundamentally influenced by player input,” he maintained. “If you had two years ago said to me: What do the owners want to do? I think they would have called every pitch with ABS as soon as possible. That’s because there is a fundamental, very fundamental interest in getting it right, right? We owe it to our fans to try to get it right because the players as I talked to them over a couple of years really, expressed a very strong interest or preference for the challenge system that we decided to test.”
Skubal wondered is all contingencies had been planned for.
“If power goes out and we don’t have ABS — sometimes we don’t have Hawk-Eye data or Trackman data. So what’s going to happen then?” he said. “Are we going to expect umpires to call balls and strikes when it’s an ABS zone?”
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