Robot Assistance for Home Plate Umpires

[[This post brought to you by T-Mobile.]]
Starting next season, Major League Baseball players will be able to challenge balls and strikes. The “Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System” will provide each team with two challenges per game, to be used by batters, pitchers, or catchers when they feel a call has been missed. If they’re right, their team will retain the challenge.

The system has been trialed extensively in the minor leagues, and it’s worked quickly in practice thus far. It should be a solid addition. What’s not solid, however, is the ridiculous product placement in MLB’s announcement. It begins in the second sentence, where emphasis has been added:

The Joint Competition Committee voted Tuesday afternoon to bring the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile, to the big leagues following several years of experimentation in the Minor Leagues and use in MLB Spring Training and the All-Star Game this year.

Do you think the committee actually voted on a proposal that referred to the corporate sponsor? I suppose the commas imply they did not, but it’s not impossible.

There’s so much more:

The ABS Challenge System runs on a 5G private network from T-Mobile for Business’ Advanced Network Solutions.

…

When a call is challenged, the Hawk-Eye view is then transmitted over a 5G private network from T-Mobile’s Advanced Network Solutions and nearly instantaneously shown to those in attendance via the videoboard and to home viewers via the broadcast.

You might also note the mention of another brand name, “Hawk-Eye”. But they didn’t get anything like this:

“We’ve accomplished a lot through our longstanding partnership with MLB, and the rollout of ABS — powered by T-Mobile 5G — is one of our most exciting milestones yet,” said Mike Katz, president of marketing, strategy and products at T-Mobile.

Sure, why wouldn’t a baseball rule change announcement contain a quote from T-Mobile’s president of marketing, strategy and products?

Once you finally make it past the insane advertising, the linked piece offers a great Q&A on how the rule will work. I’m particularly looking forward to learning just which players aren’t trusted by their teams to challenge.

Footnotes:

Hawk-Eye is a great moniker that barely feels like a brand name. Better still, Wikipedia tells me its inventor was a British math(s)ematician named Paul Hawkins. That’s the best name/inventor pair since Wordle. ↩︎

Link: https://www.mlb.com/news/abs-challenge-system-mlb-2026