ABS is Here-- Now What?

The 2026 baseball season is well underway.

And the old rumor has new life. Yes, they're moving first base one step closer to home plate, to eliminate all the close calls.

Ok, it's an absurd joke, based on a belief that supreme accuracy can be obtained with one swift move. That's a fallacy of course. But things can be made better. Maybe this is the year.

Because we now have our first formal exposure to the Automated Ball- Strike system (ABS) in Major League Baseball. ABS has been used in the minor leagues for several years. And it was used in Spring baseball this year in order to prepare teams for its official implementation in the 2026 regular season.

The early results are positive. The challenges are infrequent, and they are ( at least publicly) well- accepted. And perhaps most vital to the change, they are quick.

Here's how it works. Only the batter, or the pitcher or the catcher can initiate a challenge, and he has but two seconds to do so. The signal is a tap on the top of the hat or batting helmet, and that tight time frame means there's no glancing over into the dugout to get input from the braintrust. That aspect of the system makes things happen more quickly, and it also adds an element of intrigue, as to which players may have a green light to challenge --as well as how early in a game players may be cleared to tap.

That's because each team gets only two challenge per game ( though a challenge is retained if it is upheld on review).

And what of that review?

Yes, it is a bit different than a human ump makes the call. That's because the "robot" makes its depiction of the location of a pitch based on the mid- point of home plate , which is famously 17 inches wide . Ahhh, baseball , with its famously fluky dimensions, including a pitching rubber 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate, variable fence distances and foul territory, and the ball itself having a diameter of 2.9 inches. ( makes our English foot- pound system look downright logical)

So the traditional definition of a called strike changes a bit. The forever formal definition was that a pitch is a strike if ANY part of the baseball touches ANY part of the three- dimensional box bordered by the irregular pentagon that is the plate AND given the vaguely defined upper and lower borders of the zone– which depend on the batter's body ( plus or minus his crouch). Got all that? No wonder there are arguments!

Now, since the " robot" must base a three- dimensional space on a single point, and that point is the very center of the plate, pitches that cross that spot elsewhere will show as " missing" the strike zone.

And that strike zone is now defined at its upper and lower borders as the lines seen at 53.5% of a batter's height (top) to 23% (bottom)

With the definition now being dependent on a player's height, we now need an official height. The results of a mlb measurement frenzy has outed many hitters as eight a bit shorter than we had Bened to believe.

Sam Blum ( The Athletic) recently reported that 225 of 450 players on Opening Day were measured shorter than they had been in 2024-5. (Oddly, 45 players became taller).

Now it seems that shorter might be better if you're trying to compress a strike zone. Paging the ghost of Eddie Gaedel, the small person ( 43 inches) pinch- hitter signed by Bill Veeck back in 1951. Gaedel offered opposing pitchers a strike zone that was estimated at 1.5 inches when he was in his crouch, back when human umpires still ruled the day.

These ABS changes are ok as long as all involved agree to these ground rules . And they have, so far. Not that they have much of a choice.

An interesting early season compilation by Codify (@ CodifyBaseball) showed a wide range of " challenges per game" in the early going of 2026 , ranging from 9 (!) in one game, all the way down to zero in 19 games. The most common numbers were in the category of 2, 3 or 4 challenges in a game.

The nine- challenge game reminds us of another wrinkle the new rule provides- namely, it generates a report card of sorts for the umpires. Since you can only get to nine challenges if somebody misses at least five calls, that means accuracy was lacking in that game. And since these are balls and strikes we're talking about, the home plate ump is the man under scrutiny.

For many baseball fans, that's welcome news. Whether those report cards will have any effect on a given umps job status remains to be seen. Their union is pretty stout.

We have seen a manager get tossed for arguing that a batter did not ask for the challenge quickly enough. And we had one batter earn a walk by successfully challenging two consecutive " strike three" calls.

Certainly there will be more adventures with ABS. But it seems an overall improvement, that costs little time and causes little consternation. Given those factors, we'll take it.

Patrick Conarro

RamblinSports