Robot umpires could be coming to Major League Baseball in 2024

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Two years from now, in baseball stadiums around the US, the umpire behind home plate might not be that important. Major League Baseball plans to use robot umpires in the 20th century, the league's commissioner said. Anyone who has watched baseball in the last few years will tell you that a machine would call balls and strikes better than the humans do.

The automated ball-Strike System could be implemented in two ways. The fully automated version calls every pitch and relays the call to the umpire. The MLB could use the artificial intelligence as a review system, similar to VAR in soccer or the Hawk-Eye system used in professional tennis, where each side gets a certain number of challenges.

The technology seems to work for robot umpires, who have been at minor league baseball games for the last couple of years. You can see the strike zone on a TV broadcast, but it is not the same. TrackMan is a company that builds ball- tracking tech for golf. The system signals ball or strike into the umpires ear after every pitch, and the umpires slip a dedicated Apple device into their back pocket. The goal is to make the on-field product look the same, with umps making the calls only faster and more accurate.

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The game has been changed by the robot. The automated system tends to call more strikes than a human would, meaning that players have had to adjust their understanding of what pitch is what. Umpires still have a lot to do even with the automated systems in place.

This season, the robots have been used in Triple-A games, which is the next best thing to the majors. The average game in which the robot umpires are used is 9 minutes long. As soon as next year, a pitch clock could be used to speed up the game.

Umpires have been feeling like a certainty for a while. They won't solve everything, nor will they end fan arguments, just ask anyone who's been screwed by a VAR call. Baseball is looking for ways to appeal to a younger generation that doesn't like long games.