Throughout the long and storied history of our big and beautiful country, there have been three major constants: unnecessary war with the Middle East, some other hegemonic displacement of marginalized groups and the great American pastime of baseball. While the former two have largely remained consistent within the past two decades, the latter has suddenly decided to introduce some major changes.
Since his inauguration in 2015, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has left quite an impact on the old ball-and-stick sport, mostly for the better. Some dissenters might disagree with his handling of the (frankly overblown) Houston Astros cheating scandal in 2017, and his relocation of the Oakland Athletics to the tourist fanbase of Las Vegas is sure to leave a sour taste in the mouths of sports fans nationwide. Even so, the way he tackled the COVID-19 shutdown and implemented a plethora of much-needed adjustments to speed up the pace of play has solidified him as the best commissioner among the four major sports.
Even barring his recognition of Negro League history and World Baseball Classic expansion, the inclusion of a pitch clock has significantly revived baseball’s popularity throughout the nation. Now, at the start of the 2026 season, Manfred’s new ABS (Automated Balls and Strikes) has propelled the once-declining sport to the forefront of the American psyche.
Similar to the Hawk-Eye challenge system prevalent in professional tennis, ABS is a system of highly advanced cameras tracking the exact location of the pitch in the strike zone. Once left to the human eye of the umpire, both MLB hitters and catchers (pitchers as well, but they really shouldn’t) can now argue balls and strikes formally. Back in the day, hitters, pitchers and managers alike could pointlessly disagree with the all-powerful umpire until his waning patience would eventually run out and one, if not all three, were warned or ejected.
Maybe you would get into a minute-long staredown if you were a rough and tough country boy like Madison Bumgarner or Joe West. Either way, this new system should reduce a bit of the umpire ego this sport is so accustomed to seeing. Ideally, it’ll also reduce managerial ejections, but who am I really kidding? Already, we’ve seen umpires humiliated after having to watch their horrible calls proven wrong on the jumbotron in front of 30,000 people (See C.B. Bucknor, one of baseball’s most notorious bad strike callers, looking absolutely irate after two successful back-to-back challenges from Eugenio Suarez.)
If you, like me, were at all worried about diminishment of the human aspect of baseball that is so intrinsically tied to the ebb and flow of the game, worry not. As a Giants fan, I was extremely concerned that this new change would negatively affect the value of my defense-first catcher Patrick Bailey (82 Fielding Run Value, 67 of those runs from framing, statistically making him the most valuable defensive player since Statcast started tracking these metrics in 2018.) Fortunately for him and other great framers like Alejandro Kirk and Cal Raleigh, most hitters are too selective with their two allotted challenges a game to try and overturn most “stolen” strikes. (Can you blame them when the framing is this effortless?) If anything, catchers have started intentionally framing obvious strikes out of the zone in order to force a bad challenge.
So far, about a month into the season, ABS has been received overwhelmingly well from players, managers, executives and fans alike. Not only has it introduced new strategic developments we’ve only seen the start of, it has completely changed the viewing experience for fans, both at the park and on the couch. The former can eagerly experience a game-changing (or ending) play in anticipation with the players on the field, and the latter can passionately yell at their catcher or hitter to challenge a ball that barely skimmed the edge of the zone.
Baseball nerds like me can watch pitcher approaches evolve with the system, no longer confined to the limited and selective human eye. (High breaking balls have made a return; umpires had an 8.8% miss rate on these, almost double the miss rate of the middle and lower zones.) This technology is very new to everyone involved in the sport, but so far it has been excellent. Baseball’s back on the rise (the 2025 World Series had 26 million US viewers, almost double the same year’s NBA Finals Game 7), and Manfred’s new additions have a lot to do with it.
