Robot Umpires Are Here: How Major League Baseball’s Status Quo Can Be Upheld in 2026

  [1]

Amidst a thrilling playoff race to cap Major League Baseball’s ("MLB") 2025 regular season, the League quietly announced a massive rule change for the upcoming 2026 season aimed at reducing the impact of umpires’ imperfect pitching calls.[2] Starting in March 2026, any ball or strike call made by home plate umpires can be overturned on appeal to an objective video technology system.[3] The video review system, dubbed the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (“ABS”), stands to fundamentally alter longtime approaches to America’s pastime without threatening the immediate livelihoods of current players and umpires.[4]

Outlining the New ABS Rules

In each game, teams will be allotted two ABS challenges.[5] Following a contested pitch call, the pitcher, catcher, or batter involved in that particular pitch can initiate an ABS challenge by tapping their head immediately after the call is made.[6] Other teammates and managers cannot start the appeal process, nor can they advise players whether or not to initiate an ABS challenge.[7]

An advanced video technology platform, the Hawk-Eye system, tracks the flight of every pitch.[8] Upon an ABS challenge, the Hawk-Eye system projects a combined image of the pitch location and a virtual strike zone on stadium scoreboards and television broadcasts in seconds, allowing all players, staff, and spectators to watch the appeal process unfold in real time.[9] Teams retain their ABS challenge when the pitch call is successfully overturned.[10] Otherwise, they lose one ABS challenge.[11] When games proceed into extra innings, teams that fully depleted their ABS challenges will receive one challenge per extra inning, ensuring the game’s fairness rises proportionally with the stakes.[12]

The Rocky Journey to Implementing the ABS

Since its experimental 2022 debut in the minor leagues, ABS evolved from a pilot program praised for its accuracy to a controversial reform dividing rookies and veterans.[13] During the minor league's rollout of the new system, players and spectators lauded the speed and fairness of ABS challenges.[14] The MLB expanded its ABS experiment to the major leagues in exhibition games in 2025, stirring support from younger players eager for reform while drawing criticism from older traditionalists reluctant to dilute the human element of pitch calls.[15] Among those skeptical of the ABS system, 42-year-old pitcher Justin Verlander noted that he had calibrated his pitching style to account for human error in judging the range of strike zones and worried ABS could threaten his efficacy on the mound.[16]

Despite players’ concerns, the League managed to approve the ABS challenge system for the 2026 season through the League’s Joint Competition Committee ("The Committee").[17] The Committee, established by the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA”) between the League and the MLB Player’s Association union (“MLBPA”), holds the sole responsibility to consider and approve new rules for upcoming MLB seasons.[18] The Committee operates under common collective bargaining principles, connecting League representatives with elected player and umpire union representatives to extensively deliberate over new rules and how they can be construed to represent each party’s interests best.[19][20] The Committee consists of eleven members: four players and one umpire who represent their respective unions, and six team owners who serve as MLB representatives.[21] This composition reflects the MLB’s collective bargaining dynamics. With a six-person majority through its own representatives, the MLB retains substantially more influence over implementing new rules than its players and umpires.[22]

As the MLBPA’s explicit approval established the Committee and its uneven composition, the Committee’s inherent bias against the MLB’s unions does not violate federal labor law regarding unfair labor practices against unions.[23] Yet, with the expiration of the current MLB CBA in 2027, players may soon seek to reform the League’s collective bargaining dynamics. The Committee’s vote to approve ABS for the 2026 MLB season reportedly saw shaky support from the Committee’s elected MLBPA representatives.[24] If the ABS system is poorly received by players and umpires, players may refuse to accept a CBA in 2027 unless it includes a collective bargaining committee that grants players and umpires the same voting power as League representatives.

Should Umpires Fear for Their Jobs?

While the ABS system may appear to threaten umpires’ careers, the MLB intends for it to serve as a tool rather than a replacement.[25] Many spectators and team representatives concur with the League’s sentiments. Minor league spectators preferred umpires’ enthusiastic strike calls over emotionless calls projected on a screen.[26] Furthermore, Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy insisted that umpires supported the ABS challenge system as a means to achieve the same degree of fairness that umpires already strive to provide. Bochy emphasizes “if [the umpires] make a [bad] call that could maybe sway a game, they feel terrible too.”[27]

Furthermore, catchers have passionately supported retaining human umpires to uphold the sanctity of their position. Years spent perfecting the craft of framing pitches—moving their gloves when catching pitches to trick umpires into giving generous strike calls—would be obsolete without human umpires calling pitches.[28] The San Francisco Giants’ Patrick Bailey believes that ABS can still honor his commitment to framing so long as human umpires initially call pitches.[29] The relationship between ABS and umpires will be both welcomed and symbiotic in 2026.

How Will the League Adjust to the ABS System?

At the heart of discussions regarding the ABS system is how teams will direct their players to use challenges. Teams will surely scramble to devise analytical strategies to decide whether players will be allowed to use a team’s challenge outside of dire situations.[30] New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone has already begun to contemplate such strategies, suggesting Most Valuable Player ("MVP") slugger Aaron Judge may receive more leeway than his teammates.[31] Sluggers such as St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar believe they may become entirely different batters playing with the added security of an available ABS challenge.[32] The ABS system will certainly take players and teams by surprise, but it will not leave anyone behind.

Michael O'Neill (staff writer) is a 1L from Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Drexel University with a degree in History with a Global concentration. During his sophomore year at Drexel, he completed a six-month internship at Fox Rothschild LLP's Philadelphia headquarters as a paralegal intern. In his free time, he enjoys rooting for the Eagles and Phillies in addition to reading the official NFL and MLB rulebooks. Following graduation Michael hopes to work with an in-house counsel or as an agent for the MLB or NFL.

References:

[1] hj_west. Flickr: Carlos Peguero's O-Swing% is 47.9% (June 17, 2011). https://www.flickr.com/photos/hjwest/5844222009.

[2] Anthony Castrovince. ABS Challenge System coming to MLB full time in '26. (Sep. 23, 2025). https://www.mlb.com/news/abs-challenge-system-mlb-2026.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Sony Electronics, Inc. Hawk-Eye Innovations and MLB Introduce Next-Gen Baseball Tracking and Analytics Platform (Aug. 20, 2020). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hawk-eye-innovations-and-mlb-introduce-next-gen-baseball-tracking-and-analytics-platform-301115828.html.

[9] Castrovince, supra.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Will Warren. The good and bad of the MLB’s ABS Challenge System (Mar. 24, 2025). https://www.sdamustang.com/uncategorized/2025/03/24/the-good-and-bad-of-the-mlbs-abs-challenge-system/.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Castrovince, supra.

[18] See 2022-2026 MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article XVIII.

[19] Id.

[20] National Education Association. The 5 Stages of Collective Bargaining (June 2020). https://www.nea.org/resource-library/5-stages-collective-bargaining.

[21] 2022-2026 MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement, supra.

[22] Id.

[23] Shimabukuro, Jon O. The National Labor Relations Act: Background and Selected Topics

[24] Andrew Baggarly. When MLB adopts ABS challenge system next season, who benefits and who loses? (Sep. 24, 2025). https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6656787/2025/09/24/major-league-baseball-abs-system-reaction-impact/. Player representative Zac Gallen mentioned the new ABS rules did not have unanimous support amongst the Committee’s four player representatives.

[25] Castrovince, supra.

[26] Id.

[27] Baggarly, supra.

[28] Id.

[29] Id.

[30] Bob Nightengale. 'Robot umpires' coming to MLB with ABS challenge system approved for 2026 (Sep. 23, 2025). https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2025/09/23/mlb-robot-umpires-abs-challenge/86310385007/.

[31] Erin Shapland. Yankees Manager Gets Real About ABS News (Sep. 24, 2025). https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/yankees-manager-gets-real-about-abs-news/ar-AA1NdNuH?ocid=BingNewsVerp.

[32] Baggarly, supra.