Major League Baseball umpires get the vast majority of ball-strike calls right. According to Fangraphs data, umpires typically get between 92 percent and 94 percent of calls correct, and as might be expected, their accuracy improves with practice. Umps tend to get a higher percentage of calls right later in the season compared to their accuracy in April and May.
Nonetheless, the calls they miss can be extremely frustrating to players, managers and fans alike. Even with umps in the 90-plus percent accuracy range, there are still thousands of missed calls. According to data from Codify Baseball, in 2023 alone — the first year of the MLB pitch clock — home plate umpires missed 21,000 calls. And that was their best performance ever recorded.
To help increase accuracy, or at least alleviate some of the anxiety caused by missed calls, MLB in 2025 spring training is testing a new system known as “Automated Ball-Strike,” or ABS. In the vernacular, the system is sometimes called “robot umps.”
But MLB is not using ABS to call every pitch. Instead, each team starts a game with two challenges in its pocket. A pitcher, catcher or batter may call for a challenge by tapping his head immediately after a pitch. Managers and replay room video specialists may not get involved. Using a pitch-tracking technology known as Hawk-Eye, ABS then decides whether the challenged pitch was, in fact, a ball or a strike.
Already, one pitcher — a future Hall of Famer now pitching what may be the final season of his 18-year career on a $15.5 million, one-year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays — is not happy with the system.
More MLB: Yankees Reliever Lost After One Spring Training Pitch as Injury Crisis Continues
In his 2025 spring training debut on Tuesday, Max Scherzer — a 216 career game winner with a lifetime 3.16 ERA and more strikeouts (3,407) than all but 10 pitchers in MLB history — challenged two pitch calls, and lost both times.
The 40-year-old three-time Cy Young Award winner was left disgruntled, to say the least.
“Can we just play baseball?” Scherzer said after the game, as quoted by ESPN.com. “We’re humans. Can we just be judged by humans? Do we really need to disrupt the game? I think humans are defined by humans.”
-
Yankees Predicted to Trade for $74 Million 8-Time All-Star Before Opening Day
-
How to Watch Dodgers vs Brewers: Live Stream MLB Spring Training, TV Channel
-
Roki Sasaki Gives Up Massive Home Run to Top White Sox Prospect on Second Pitch
-
Yankees Reliever Lost After One Spring Training Pitch as Injury Crisis Continues
Scherzer also backed the current, human umpires, calling them “really good.”
But that was not what the eight-time All-Star hurler was saying as recently as last season, when he called for use of an “electronic strike zone” to rank MLB umpires. The lowest-ranked umps, under Scherzer’s 2024 view, would be demoted to the minor leagues.
More MLB: Blue Jays Outfielder Suffers Scary Injury, Leaves Spring Training Game
“This is where Scherzer loses me. He is open to an electronic strike zone as long as it doesn’t apply to him,” wrote FanSided’s Mark Powell on Wednesday. “And he wants those same bad calls to go in his favor.”
His griping over losing ABS challenges aside, Scherzer turned in a solid two innings in his debut outing as a Blue Jay. Facing the St. Louis Cardinals, the 2006 first-round draft pick struck out four, while allowing one run on one hit with no walks.
He recorded 20 strikes in 34 pitches, but still left unhappy that it wasn’t 22.
