Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged on Wednesday that he intends to submit a proposal to the league’s competition committee this offseason that would implement the automated ball-strike challenge system ahead of Opening Day 2026, according to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. MLB, of course, tested the ABS challenge system during spring training and had previously experimented with variations at the minor-league level.
The competition committee, created in the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement, consists of six owners, four players, and an umpire. In other words, Manfred’s push for the ABS challenge system should be able to pass regardless of how players and umpires feel about the proposal.
“My single biggest concern is working through the process and deploying it in a way that’s acceptable to the players,” Manfred said. “There’s always going to be things around the edges that we need to work through and whatever, and I want them to feel like we respected the committee process and that there was a full airing of concerns about the system, and an attempt to address those concerns before we go forward.”
As CBS Sports detailed back when the system was introduced during the spring, the ABS is based on individualized player heights — not just a generic strike zone that broadcasts tend to employ. The “challenge” aspect, meanwhile, sees the human umpires retain most of the strike-calling.
The biggest change is that each team is afforded two challenges they can employ on calls they find to be questionable, with each challenge taking a trifling amount of time to complete. Batters would simply tap their helmets if they want to challenge a particular call.
Manfred’s desire to implement the ABS challenge system has been no secret. He confirmed as much last fall. Additionally, MLB gained the power to implement the ABS as part of their new CBA with umpires.
