Baseball’s New Ball-and-Strike System

Eliminating Nuance for the Sake of Fairness

By: Lydia Tallarini

In Major League Baseball, umpires call 97% of pitches correctly. The remaining 3% are mistakes, sometimes obvious, sometimes not—but mistakes nonetheless. And they cause problems. Maybe some fans enjoy the resulting arguments on the field, but it’s certain that managers do not.

Enter the electronic ball-and-strike system. With this new technology, cameras, not the umpire, determine if the pitch was in the strike zone, and a voice says “ball” or “strike” into the umpire’s ear for them to repeat aloud. This “robo-ump” system removes the possibility of error or bias against a hitter or pitcher, a benefit obvious even to someone who doesn’t watch baseball.

Although there are still some kinks that need to be worked out, the ball-and-strike system and the way it equalizes the standards for pitches has been working decently in some Minor League testing grounds. One practical problem is that the system is calibrated to each hitter, making it difficult for pitchers to know where exactly to aim.

Aside from implementation issues, the most concerning complaint I’ve heard is that robo-umps will change the very game of baseball. With the sudden introduction of technology to a sport, there’s an incentive to game the system. Pitchers will have to adapt. Some might not be able to use their favorite pitches because of the new, inflexible strikezone, while others will find it easy to go for high fastballs, since the system is usually more generous with those.

Is that alright? Is baseball, America’s favorite pastime, going to change just like that? Once we accept this relatively innocuous technology, it could clear the path for more substantial changes, like a pitching timer to speed up games. But even that isn’t necessarily bad: this choice would update the sport to keep pace with the modern definition of entertainment while preserving the integrity of the game. Little leagues and backyard games don’t need to have timers or camera-defined strike zones, but in pro leagues, these technologies can make the game both more fair and more fun.