This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
MLB announced that in 2026, it would implement a challenge system for ball-and-strike calls, one that has been tested in the minor leagues for a while and was tried out in 2025 spring training. Teams will get two failed challenges in each game; successful challenges will have no cost. The challenge must be issued immediately with no input from anyone but the player -- pitcher, catcher, or batter -- making the challenge. The ABS system, which often differs from the strike-zone box on your television, will adjudicate the call and post the outcome on the ballpark scoreboard.
This is something I want to dig into this winter, because it’s not nearly as simple as “robot umps, yay!” The sharply limited number of failed challenges make this rule change much less about getting calls right and much more about understanding leverage. This is similar to the way replay hasn’t been about getting calls right but about teams trying to get calls in their favor. It’s messy and complicated and has the potential to create significant conflicts. Let me circle back on the details after the postseason.
My immediate reaction, though, is that this is a half-measure that won’t have much effect. It is, in fact, designed to not have much effect, but rather to win the press conference. There will still be thousands of instances in which the home-plate umpire reverses the result of the pitcher’s action -- calling a ball a strike, calling a strike a ball -- and influences the course of the game. There simply aren’t enough challenges in this rule set to repair every instance of an umpire flipping 500 points of OPS by being wrong on a 1-1 pitch.
MLB can get the calls right and is choosing not to do so. This program is a compromise, and it should serve as a reminder that not all compromise is good. The midpoint between a good idea and a bad idea is often just a different bad idea set against a backdrop of smiles and handshakes.
This is something I want to dig into this winter, because it’s not nearly as simple as “robot umps, yay!” The sharply limited number of failed challenges make this rule change much less about getting calls right and much more about understanding leverage. This is similar to the way replay hasn’t been about getting calls right but about teams trying to get calls in their favor. It’s messy and complicated and has the potential to create significant conflicts. Let me circle back on the details after the postseason.
My immediate reaction, though, is that this is a half-measure that won’t have much effect. It is, in fact, designed to not have much effect, but rather to win the press conference. There will still be thousands of instances in which the home-plate umpire reverses the result of the pitcher’s action -- calling a ball a strike, calling a strike a ball -- and influences the course of the game. There simply aren’t enough challenges in this rule set to repair every instance of an umpire flipping 500 points of OPS by being wrong on a 1-1 pitch.
MLB can get the calls right and is choosing not to do so. This program is a compromise, and it should serve as a reminder that not all compromise is good. The midpoint between a good idea and a bad idea is often just a different bad idea set against a backdrop of smiles and handshakes.
