Major League Baseball is planning to debut its automated strike zone in Minor League Baseball games next season. MLB has already tested its TrackMan-powered balls and strikes system across the independent Atlantic League and the MLB-affiliated Arizona Fall League.
According to The Athletic, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in an interview with MLB Network last week that the league will take this offseason to upgrade its automated strike zone technology before installing it in “some” minor league stadiums.
“Here’s our thinking on the automated strike zone: The technology exists. We have the technology,” Manfred said on MLB Now. “We’re actually going through a big upgrade of that piece of our technology during this offseason. I think we need to be ready to use an automated strike zone when the time is right. That’s why we experimented in the Atlantic League. It’s why we went to the Arizona Fall League. It’s why we’re using it in Minor League Baseball next year, in some ballparks at least.”
Our Joe Lemire attended the Atlantic League All-Star Game in July and wrote about the electronic strike zone debuting in a live game. TrackMan’s 3-D Doppler Radar system called balls and strikes and relayed its decision to the home plate umpire, who wore an AirPod in his ear. The umpire then vocalized the call, declaring ball or strike depending on the robot’s ruling.
“There’s no question that it is more accurate than any human being,” Atlantic League president Rick White told SportTechie in July. “It is within a matter of degrees—not a matter of inches, not a matter of half an inch, [but] a matter of an eighth of an inch.”
