EPISODE · Feb 26, 2026 · 5 MIN
Robot Umpires Are Here: ABS and the Mistakes It May Create | Mistake of the Week
from My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership · host Mark Graban
Baseball has always made room for human error. Umpires miss calls. Fans complain. Life goes on. But this season, MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system -- ABS -- giving teams two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike calls. The idea is to reduce bad calls. The likely side effect is a whole new category of mistakes. In this "Mistake of the Week," Mark Graban looks at what happens when correcting human error depends on another human decision -- and what one anonymous coach predicted, vividly, about how this will play out.
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What this episode covers
MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system -- ABS -- for the 2025 regular season. The idea is to reduce bad calls by giving teams two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike decisions. Get it right, you keep the challenge. Get it wrong, you lose it. It’s a smart design. It’s also a new source of mistakes that didn’t exist before the fix. In this Mistake of the Week, Mark looks at what happens when correcting human error depends on another human decision -- and what one anonymous coach predicted, vividly, about how the pressure of challenge management will play out before the season is over. Technology changes what kind of mistakes get made. It doesn’t eliminate them.
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Robot Umpires Are Here: ABS and the Mistakes It May Create | Mistake of the Week
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