The Liga Mexicana de Beisbol announced Friday that the league would use the Automatic Ball/Strike system to call balls and strikes starting with the games of July 6 through the end of the regular season.
All 20 LMB clubs played a home and a road series between May 20 and July 2 where the ABS system, or the “robot umpire,” was in use. The league’s board has voted to adopt the system for the remainder of the season after the test of the system was deemed successful.
For games starting July 6, there will be five umpires used for each game: four on the field and another in the press box, who will be seated next to the official scorer. The umpire in the press box will receive the TrackMan data on whether the pitch is a ball or a strike and relay it via radio to the home plate umpire.
The adoption of the “robot umpire” by the LMB makes the 101-year-old league the first in the Americas to use the technology during the regular season.
“For fans, the robot umpire means a new experience: uncertainty is reduced, the margin for human error becomes minimal and, in this new world of hot ball, the decision-makers will be computers and radars,” the LMB said in a press release. “It is important to specify that in games where the robot umpire comes into operation, there will be no challenges to the strike zone, since the Trackman markings will govern the count of balls and strikes throughout the game.”
Teams will continue to be able to use video replay to challenge calls made on the field.
Illustration: Robot umpire graphic courtesy of LMB.
