MLB's new Automated Ball-Strike challenge system is designed to reduce bad calls. It may also create a new category of mistakes — ones that didn't exist before the fix.
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Baseball has always made room for human error. Umpires miss calls. Fans complain. Life goes on.
But this season, MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system — ABS — giving teams two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike calls.
The idea is to reduce bad calls. The likely side effect is a whole new category of mistakes.
In this “Mistake of the Week,” Mark Graban looks at what happens when correcting human error depends on another human decision — and what one anonymous coach predicted, vividly, about how this will play out.
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Full Transcript
Hi, I’m Mark Graban—and this is The Mistake of the Week.
For nearly two centuries, baseball accepted a fundamental truth: umpires are human, and human beings miss calls. Fair or foul. Safe or out. Ball or strike. Fans argued, players fumed, and managers kicked dirt until they were blue in the face—and then everyone moved on. Sometimes, the umpire moved on, too—straight to the clubhouse after an early ejection.
Mistakes were simply part of the game’s DNA.
But modern sports have increasingly decided that some errors are too costly to accept—especially when technology can “fix” them. This season, Major League Baseball is taking its biggest step yet into that future. After years of testing in the minor leagues and trial runs in Spring Training, MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system.
Robot umpires are here. Well, sort of.
The Trzeciak Incident: When the Human Eye Fails
In a Pirates-Red Sox spring training game on Tuesday, home plate umpire Mitch Trzeciak had five consecutive calls overturned by ABS — all before the end of the third inning. One pitch, according to the NESN broadcast, was essentially right down the middle. The crowd eventually gave Trzeciak a sarcastic standing ovation when one of his calls was finally upheld.
To be fair, Trzeciak is a Triple-A umpire getting a look in a big-league game. But that moment illustrates exactly what the system is designed to catch: the clear human error.
The New Game Within the Game
Here is where the “mistake” gets interesting. Under the new rules, each team gets two challenges per game. If you're right, you keep the challenge. If you're wrong, it’s gone.
Theoretically, a team that challenges with 100% accuracy could have “infinite” challenges. But in practice, you are operating in a high-pressure vacuum. A catcher or hitter has roughly two seconds after the umpire’s call to decide whether to tap their helmet and trigger a review.
That two-second window is a pressure cooker. You have to decide—right now—if you’re sure enough to risk one of your only two lifelines. Correcting a human error now depends on a second human decision that could be equally flawed.
Correcting One Error with Another
This introduces a whole new category of mistakes. A team that saves its challenges too long will inevitably regret it—after all, you can't take 'em with you to the hotel. But a team that burns them too early is in even worse shape. Imagine a catcher using the last challenge in the third inning, only to watch a game-ending strike go uncorrected in the ninth because the cupboard is bare.
One coach, speaking anonymously to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark, predicted a different kind of fallout:
“There will definitely be a fight. You’ll see. There’s gonna be a night where some rookie hitter uses the last challenge, screws it up, and then the cleanup hitter comes up in a crucial situation late in the game, needs to challenge, and you don’t have any. Someone’s gonna show up the next day with a black eye. And you’ll remember I told you this.”
Punching a teammate? That would be a mistake layered on top of a mistake.
Technology can eliminate the “bad call,” but it can’t eliminate the pressure of human judgment. Whether it's an umpire's eyes or a manager's two-second snap decision, the game remains stubbornly, beautifully human.
I’m Mark Graban. And this has been The Mistake of the Week.
FAQ: The ABS Challenge System and the Mistakes It May Create
The Automated Ball-Strike system — ABS — is a technology-based challenge system MLB is rolling out for the 2026 regular season. Rather than replacing umpires entirely, it gives each team two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike calls. If the challenge is correct, the team keeps it. If it's wrong, they lose it.
Each team gets two incorrect challenges per game. A player or manager can trigger a challenge on any ball-or-strike call. The call is then checked against a technology-based strike zone. Correct challenges are retained; incorrect ones are used up. Teams must manage their two challenges strategically across nine innings.
The challenge system introduces a new category of human decision-making errors. A team might burn both challenges early and have none left for a critical call late in the game. A player who challenges incorrectly could cost the team its remaining challenge. The decision of when — and whether — to challenge adds pressure and second-guessing that didn't exist before.
Not entirely. ABS can reduce errors in ball-and-strike calls, but it shifts the source of mistakes rather than eliminating them. Human judgment is still required to decide when to use a challenge, and poor challenge management can create new controversies and in-game conflicts.