Former MLB Umpire Says Robot Strike Zone Technology Will Humiliate Current Umps

Retired Major League Baseball umpire Richie Garcia believes the new Automated Ball-Strike System will embarrass current umpires when their calls get overturned. The technology allows teams to challenge strike zone decisions using computer analysis, though umpires achieved their highest accuracy rate ever last season at 92.83%.

A former Major League Baseball umpire is expressing concerns about how new automated technology will affect the officials currently working behind home plate.

MLB launched its Automated Ball-Strike System during regular season games this year, beginning with the Yankees’ season opener against San Francisco on Wednesday evening. The system allows teams to challenge strike zone calls using data from 12 Hawk-Eye cameras.

“I think it’s embarrassing, embarrassing to the umpires that are calling the game. Nobody likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000, 40,000 people,” Garcia stated. The veteran official worked MLB games from 1975 through 1999. “What Major League Baseball is saying is: I don’t trust the umpire’s strike zone, so I’m going to use something that’s going to be operated by some computer geek that knows nothing about baseball, and he’s the one that’s going to measure this and measure that because he’s got a Ph.D. in physics or whatever the hell he’s got a degree in.”

Garcia faced scrutiny during the 1998 World Series opener when he didn’t call a strike on a 2-2 delivery from San Diego’s Mark Langston to Yankees batter Tino Martinez. Martinez subsequently connected for a game-changing grand slam that helped propel New York to a series sweep.

Despite ongoing discussions about questionable calls, umpires achieved record-breaking precision last season, though still falling short of technological standards.

MLB umpires made calls on 368,898 pitches during the regular season, averaging 152 decisions per contest. Their 92.83% accuracy represented the best performance on record, with an average of 10.88 incorrect calls per game. This marked significant improvement from 2016, when officials averaged 16.58 missed calls per game with 89.31% accuracy.

“I’m 60 and it seems to me like the younger generation really wants this technology and they want the certainty of a pitch being a ball or a strike,” commented Ted Barrett, who officiated major league games from 1994 through 2022.

The ABS system provides each team two challenges per game, with successful challenges preserved. Teams receive an additional challenge during each extra inning after exhausting their allotment.

“As an umpire, you never want to miss anything. You want to be absolutely 100% correct, but we’re all human and that’s just not possible,” explained Sam Holbrook, who served as an MLB umpire from 1996 to 2022. “Social media and the media have really been hammering the umpires for pitches that are just minutely off the zone or in the zone or whatever, and it’s just too hard to be perfect with all of this. I think it’s going to be good to correct any egregious pitches. I think it’s going to show how good the umpires actually are.”

Baseball first introduced electronic monitoring with Questec’s Umpire Information System at select venues in 2001, then expanded to league-wide Zone Evaluation in 2009 through PITCHf/x technology. TrackMan’s doppler radar replaced the previous system in 2017 as part of MLB Statcast.

Umpires have received Z-E performance evaluations for every plate appearance since 2009. Starting in 2014, they also began experiencing call reversals through expanded video replay.

“It’s tough mentally on an umpire because you failed at your job and there’s that instant feedback of failure,” Barrett noted. “Nobody wants to fail at your job, but then there’s also the, hey, thank God I didn’t cost that team a game or a run or a pennant. No one wants to live with that. And so we take the positive of that. The negative is sometimes it’s like: What am I doing over there? I got overturned twice at first base.”

The ABS defines strikes as pitches crossing the plate at its midpoint within a zone measuring 53.5% of the batter’s height at the top and 27% at the bottom. This differs from the official rulebook strike zone, which creates a rectangular area from the midpoint between shoulder tops and uniform pants down to the hollow below the kneecap.

“They’re going to change to what the ABS calls, whether it’s a challenge or not because, remember, they are getting evaluated on their performance based on that ABS,” Barrett observed.

During spring training, Philadelphia led all teams in successful batting challenges at 61%, followed by Chicago Cubs at 60%, with Boston and Seattle each at 54%. Texas and Arizona both struggled at 33%, while Kansas City managed just 34%.

For defensive challenges, St. Louis topped the rankings at 75%, with Cincinnati at 71% and Cleveland at 70%. The Los Angeles Dodgers lagged at 43%, while Baltimore achieved 45%.

Batters succeeded on 46% of their 887 challenges, while defensive teams won 60% of 1,020 attempts. The Yankees recorded the most overall challenge victories with 54, while Arizona, the Dodgers, and New York Mets each tied for fewest wins at 20.

Boston’s Willson Contreras led all batters in challenges and succeeded on six of seven attempts. Philadelphia’s Christian Cairo maintained perfect success, winning all four of his batter challenges.

Among catchers, St. Louis’s Pedro Pagés went 8-for-8, Cincinnati’s P.J. Higgins finished 7-for-7, and Milwaukee’s Jeferson Quero achieved 6-for-6.

Chicago White Sox catcher Edgar Quero struggled at 2-for-11, New York Yankees’ Payton Henry went 1-for-9, and Oakland’s Austin Wynns failed on all seven attempts.