It worked for Charlotte Knights. Now electronic strike zone will be in all AAA baseball
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There’s a revolutionary bit of technology circling in baseball, and the Charlotte Knights have helped prove its promise.
According to an ESPN report late Thursday, an electronic strike zone will be used in all 30 Class AAA parks in 2023. The news marks an expanded use of the technology from the 11 Triple-A ballparks that it was used in this past season — and it appears to be a step toward implementing the technology at the big league level in the future.
Charlotte was one of those original parks to use the Automatic Balls and Strikes system in 2022. And it apparently worked well enough to warrant using it more.
The Automatic Balls and Strikes system — better known as ABS — essentially takes the human decision-making away from home plate umpires when a pitch is thrown. ABS sets up a predetermined strike zone; it then locates a pitch’s location and trajectory; and then it delivers the umpire (who’s wearing an earpiece on the field) whether the pitch was a ball or a strike.
The system was rolled out in 2022 in select minor league stadiums to help provide MLB with more feedback and data on the ABS technology.
Charlotte was selected as a testing ground for ABS after the league considered “a number of factors,” the Observer previously reported, “including geography, ballpark infrastructure, and the willingness of the Major League Club to host the Automated Ball-Strike System.” The Knights play at Truist Field, one of the best Triple-A facilities in the country plopped in the center of uptown. The team’s MLB affiliate is the Chicago White Sox.
Now all Triple-A ballparks will use the technology, including another North Carolina-based Triple-A team, the Durham Bulls.
Per the aforementioned ESPN report, ABS will be deployed in different ways. Half of the Triple-A games will be played with all of the calls determined by an electronic strike zone. And the other half will be played with an ABS “challenge” system: In other words, a team can ask for a pitch to be reviewed using ABS if it disagrees with the call the umpire makes on the field.
This is one of the many measures MLB is testing to make the game more tantalizing to fans. Among the other measures: implementing a pitch clock, limiting the use of defensive shifts and adding a restriction on pitcher pickoff attempts.
This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 4:13 PM.
