The Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS) has intruded into Major League Baseball Spring Training games. In this podcast, I refute the wisdom and necessity of using it at this level of play, because it will not necessarily guarantee 100-percent accuracy in calling balls and strikes. And the way that selected players can challenge an umpire’s ball-strike call introduces an element in the game that reverses the relationship between the two and supplants the umpire’s primary function on the field.

And, because it does so, why not just replace human umpires with this infallible machine?

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byroncopley.com

Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin