And the game of baseball changed, forever.
In last night's 3-1 Yankee win over San Francisco, seven Automatic Ball and Strike challenges reversed calls by umpire Whitson. One, in the 3rd, turned a called-third strike on Trent Grisham into ball three, leading to a walk and a run. Another, in the 9th, nearly led to a Giants rally. Whitson started the game as its Supreme and Undisputed Boss. He finished looking like a castrated flyspeck, a vestigial organ perched ornamentally behind the catcher.
Never again will home plate bullies - the mistake-prone Richie Garcia or the arrogant "Cowboy" Joe West - decide the outcome of ball games.
From now on, the faceless, lifeless eyeball of A.I. - the HAL 9000 of sports: ("I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that") - will overturn calls that were accepted for more than a century.
From now on, a K is not a K, until the ABS challenge is complete.
And damn... here's the rub:
I dunno if we should celebrate this... or fight it with all we got.
Soon, every stat, every outcome, every disputed play that was to eventually become a vagary of the game... they'll be gone. Someone will hit .400. Or a pitcher will throw back-to-back perfect games. Everything we once took for granted will be subject to review. Baseball history is no more.
This week, the Yankees swept SF. But the real winner was The Machine. For now, teams are allowed only two wrongful challenges per game. That rule will not hold. After all, why should a bad call in the ninth - or any time - be allowed?
Every fan remembers at least one at-bat - a called third strike in the dirt, or a bases loaded walk, right down the middle - so botched by the home ump that we screamed at the TV and kicked the puppy, and - frankly, we will take the outrage to our graves. Never again, right? Well, we'll soon get our wish.
But I wonder: Did baseball just kick humanity in the balls?
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I, for one, welcome our machine masters. Especially since human umps can suck so incredibly bad. It's a tough job, I'm sure, but I'd rather have a game called correctly than turn into the NFL, where refs routinely decide games with their questionable--sometimes suspiciously so--penalty calls. But I don't see that problem solved anytime soon. Replays alone won't do it. In both baseball and football, we've seen bad calls upheld by humans looking at multiple video angles, unable to determine what really happened.
That, I suppose, may always be with us. But let's eliminate it as much as we can.
I'm afraid the Great AI Overlord - the real HAL 9000 - has been in charge for some time. Unbeknownst to Yankee fans, George Steinbrenner never had a son. But - genius that he was - he built the very first AI bot and call it 'his son'.
As the discerning eye will observe, all roster, lineup, positioning, player development, trades and conditioning programs are determined by HAL 9000.
But he needed front men, because he knew that it was far too soon for the world to accept his creation. So he turned an intern into the general manager. When George finally passed away, he had code written to describe the perfect front men. HAL 9000 hired an pudgy guy to play the son and - eventually - an amiable fop to serve as manager. Everyone has been paid handsomely to keep the secret.
But a good software program can't rest on its laurels. It requires constant upgrades. This is where the true genius of Levine & Trost appears. As gambling took over sports, our two heroes realized they could tweak the HAL 9000 to make decisions in real time that maximize gambling profits.
HAL 9000 has become a juggernaut!
This is why Yankee operational decisions are so fakakta, why the front office staff never leave and why the Yankees will never win a world series.
They make too much money losing in the end.
So I watched the game on FOX and, though I listened mighty carefully, didn't hear any anti-Yankee bias from John Smoltz. (I did doze off once or twice but don't think I missed anything important.) He does a great job of commenting and analyzing. If everyone thinks he's anti-Yankee (which I'm sure he is on the inside but I'm talking about outwardly), then I guess it must be so, but I've yet to hear it. Too bad the Yankees didn't hire him as the pitching coach. They really could've used him.
I'd heard Will Warren had a great spring training and that he might've been the best Yankee pitcher, but I hadn't really paid much attention to that talk. (I hadn't seen him pitch this spring.)
Yesterday, Warren opened my eyes. He must've been comparing notes with other Yankee fireballers like Schlittler or Lagrange, because this dude was bringing it yesterday. I don't remember Warren throwing this hard last year. Yesterday, he was mid to high nineties. Wow! Maybe he was working with the weighted ball over the winter. Maybe he hit the weight room. But he was dealing. Sure does look poised to have a big year.
This guy is already a lot better pitcher than Clarke Schmidt. When Schmidt finally gets back, they should trade Schmidt. I would've traded Schmidt before the injury. Fucking Cashman.
So they won yesterday. HOORAH!!! But man, that was a boooooooorrrrrrinnnnnng game. Except when Judge, or maybe Ben Rice comes up, there's really nothing to hold your attention. the bottom of the lineup was a bottomless chasm.
I really do think this team is going to struggle to score runs this year. They're going to look particularly bad against the Blow Jobs and the Red Sux. Think they did bad against those teams last year? I'd be surprised if they win 30% of their games against those teams this year.
Infield defense held its own yesterday, but you have to wonder how Jizz Chasm holds up at 2B this year. He did a lousy feed to Cabellero on one double play, causing a poor throw that almost resulted in a disaster at 1B with Rice colliding with the runner. People get on Judge for his slumps? How 'bout Jism? He always talks big. Says he'll hit 50 homers and swipe 50 bases this year. Yeah, my ass. I'd be surprised if Chisholm hits 30 homers this year.
I’ve long been an advocate for ABS, but find the challenge system flawed. Better to have ALL pitches called by ABS. What do we do with home plate umpires? Well, what did we do with telephone operators?
Not a fan of Chisholm, who I suspect will be playing 2b somewhere else next year. (If there is a next year)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/28/sports/umpire-cb-bucknor-has-6-calls-overturned-during-one-game-in-embarrassing-abs-moment/
Even if we went all ABS on balls and strikes, we'd still need the home plate ump to call plays at the plate. Also for hit by pitches, check swings, catcher's interference, batter's interference with the catcher on attempted steals by baserunners, balks, clock violations, illegal bat violations, batter standing outside the batter's box, pitcher with illegal substance violations.
And then there's the slight chance that the computer goes berserk and makes a terrible call on a ball/strike. What then? Perhaps the home plate ump can review an obvious blunder by the ABS. So maybe they have it reversed: maybe the ABS should call balls and strikes and the ump should have the power to review terrible ABS mistakes.
You know, there's going to be times where the ump makes a ball or strike call, and one team thinks the game is over. Only to have the other team challenge the call and get it overturned. Shades of the Miss Universe envelope blunder or the WWF where the wrestler on top for the cover thinks the ref counted three (when he said it was two and a half)! Imagine that happens in Game 7 of the World Series, 9th inning or extra innings. Shure will be embarrassing for MLB.
Great points, Duque. And great discussion. Yeah, part of me wants to just chuck all the reviews, period. Maybe with the exception of some, electronic way of determining if a ball is really a home run.
The trouble is that the move to automation will be pushed by gambling, the force that nobody in sports or all of America seems able to stand up to today. As long as we have the incredible replays that we do today, gamblers and gambling companies will never accept human fallibility.
And hell, it could be a blessing in disguise, limiting the amount of corruption that is almost inevitable at this point.
I haven't heard about how all of this ABS works. Before recently, ABS meant "anti-lock brake system" to me. I'm not exactly a techno-wiz. The other day, I did an internet search for "what the hell is bluetooth?"
Anyway, what happens when the fucking ASS-stros manipulate the cameras or computers to make the Yankee hitter's strike zones 30% bigger than their own hitter's strike zones? Or when they make the Yankee pitcher's strike zones 50% smaller than their own pitcher's strike zones. You know the Red Sux and the ASS-stros compute geeks and engineers will be hard at work on this problem. How does this ABS technology really work? Is it administered by MLB? Is it truly independent of any pernicious tweaking by the home team (or the internet gambling establishment)?
Many bloggers love Jism because of his "personality", er willingness to be different. What I have seen is a big mouth who gets very quiet in tough spots. He's a helluva athlete who plays for the highlights. Recklessly. The ball will find him in the big moments.. It won't be pretty.
Evidently, these days, computers have become so powerful that they can manufacture exact replicas of human actors. These digital automations can look exactly like humans and can seem to walk, talk, fight, eat or do anything you can think of on a screen, same as human actors. They can also mimic your voice, just like in the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic "The Terminator". These simulations are taking over the internet. How do we know that the ABS system is clean? That it's not a simulation manufacturing lies? Was that ball really a tenth of an inch below the strike zone? Was that pitch really on the outside corner of the plate?
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