NEW YORK – Richie Garcia is concerned about the impact robot referees might have on their human counterparts.
Major League Baseball introduced an automated ball-strike system for regular-season play this season starting with the New York Yankees’ home opener in San Francisco on Wednesday night, giving teams a chance to appeal strike zone decisions to a system based on 12 Hawk-Eye cameras.
“I think it’s embarrassing and embarrassing for the umpires who are officiating the game,” said Garcia, who umpired the Major League from 1975 to 1999. “No one likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000 or 40,000 people.” It’s run by a computer geek who knows nothing about baseball, and he’s the guy who’s going to measure this and measure that because he’s got a PhD in physics or something he’s got a degree in.”
Garcia drew criticism for not hitting a 2-2 home run by San Diego’s Mark Langston to the Yankees’ Tino Martinez in the 1998 World Series opener, and Martinez hit a walk-off hit in a grand slam in the ensuing pitch that propelled New York to a four-game sweep.
Referees continue to improve
Although there is ongoing controversy over the calls, the referees were generally the most accurate of all last year. Not as perfect as technology.
There were 368,898 regular-season pitches called by major league teams last season, an average of 152 per game. The 92.83% accuracy rate was the highest ever — an average of 10.88 missed calls per game, according to MLB. That’s down from an average of 16.58 missed calls per game in 2016, when the accuracy rate was 89.31%.
“I’m 60 years old, and it seems to me that the younger generation really wants this technology and wants to make sure the pitch is a ball or a strike,” said Ted Barrett, a major league player from 1994-2022.
Under ABS, each team gets two challenges per game and keeps the challenge if successful. The team that exits the challenges gets one extra in each bonus round.
“As an umpire, you never want to miss anything,” said Sam Holbrook, an MLB umpire from 1996 to 2022. “You want to be absolutely 100% right, but we’re all human and that’s not possible.” “Social media and the media have been attacking referees on pitches outside the penalty area or inside the box or whatever, and it’s very difficult to be perfect with all of this. I think it would be good to correct any foul throws, and I think that will show how good the referees actually are.”
A quarter century of electronic assessment
MLB installed the QuesTec-developed umpiring information system in some ballparks in 2001 and upgraded it to league-wide zone evaluation in 2009 as part of the PITCHf/x system. TrackMan’s Doppler radar system took over in 2017 as part of MLB Statcast.
Since 2009, umpires have received a ZE rating for every game they play behind the plate. Since 2014, they have also been subjected to an extended video review.
“It’s mentally tough on the referee because you failed at your job, and there are immediate reactions to failure,” Barrett said. “Nobody wants to fail at your job, but there’s also, thank God, I didn’t cost this team a game or a run or a pennant. Nobody wants to live with that. So we take the positive. And the negative sometimes is like, ‘What am I doing out there? I’m turned over twice at first base.’
Under the ABS system, a hit is defined as when the ball crosses over the plate at the middle of the plate in a box that is 53.5% of the hitter’s height at the top and 27% at the bottom. This is different from the rulebook hitting area of the cube, whose apex is the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the dress pants, the bottom of which is in the recess under the kneecap.
“They’ll switch to what’s called ABS, whether it’s a challenge or not, because, remember, they’re being evaluated based on their performance based on the ABS,” Barrett said.
Spring training test results from 2026
Philadelphia had the best spring training challenge success rate among the teams at the plate at 61%, followed by the Chicago Cubs (60%), Boston and Seattle (54% each), while Texas, Arizona (33% each) and Kansas City (34%) were at the bottom.
St. Louis (75%), Cincinnati (71%) and Cleveland (70%) led in challenge success by fielding teams, while the Los Angeles Dodgers (43%) and Baltimore (45%) trailed.
Hitters won 46% of 887 challenges and defenses 60% of 1,020. The Yankees won the most challenges overall with 54, and Arizona, Dodgers and New York Mets tied for the fewest wins with 20.
Boston’s Wilson Contreras faced the toughest challenges and succeeded in six of seven. Philadelphia Christian Cairo faced the biggest challenges among hitters with a 100% success rate at four.
Among the fishermen was Peter Pages of St. Louis Louis 8-for-8, Cincinnati’s PJ Higgins 7-for-7 and Milwaukee’s Jefferson Quero 6-for-6.
Edgar Cuero of the Chicago White Sox was 2-for-11, Payton Henry of the Yankees 1-for-9 and Austin Wiens of the Athletics 0-for-7.
