The Seattle Mariners opened their Spring Training schedule with a win and a loss on Friday, beating the San Diego Padres 7-4 but losing their first try with the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System.
The technology for tracking balls and strikes and challenging the human umpires behind home plate is making its Major League Baseball debut this season.
Mariners’ catcher Cal Raleigh challenged a ball call by umpire Nic Lentz seven pitches into the Cactus League season in Peoria, Ariz.
The ABS system, powered by T-Mobile, quickly showed on the stadium video board that the pitch from the M’s Dane Dunning to the Padres’ Jackson Merrill was high and out of the strike zone by 1.7 inches. The count went to 3-2 as some in the crowd moaned and chuckled.
The system relies on Hawk-Eye technology that monitors the exact location of each pitch, relative to the batter’s zone. Only players — the batter, the catcher, or the pitcher — can request a challenge of a ball or strike call they feel the umpire got wrong. Each team will have two challenges to start a game.
When a call is challenged, the Hawk-Eye view is transmitted over a 5G private network from T-Mobile’s Advanced Network Solutions and shown via video board to those in the ballpark and to home viewers via the broadcast. The ball-strike call is then either confirmed or overturned, and the game goes on.
When the league’s competition committee voted last fall to bring the system to the big leagues, Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier T-Mobile called it an “exciting milestone” in its longstanding partnership with MLB. The company said that while it was helping the league innovate, it was also “preserving the character of the game we love.”
Video review of some calls on the field has been a part of baseball since 2008. The ABS system introduces technology that serves as a middle ground, preserving the human error that comes with real umpires and stopping short of giving all ball-strike calls to “robot umps.”
MLB.com has a lengthy FAQ on the rules around the ABS system, which will make its formal debut on opening night when the San Francisco Giants host the New York Yankees on March 25 on Netflix.
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