Athletics fans missing baseball in the Bay Area now have a reason to pay very close attention to the independent league Oakland Ballers.
On Saturday, Sept. 6, the B’s will make baseball history by partnering with Distillery, an AI company, to let artificial intelligence manage most gameday decisions against the Great Falls Voyagers. Manager Aaron Miles will allow the AI to do everything from creating the initial lineup to determining when to pull a pitcher.
“This game I’ll be like, ‘Hey, it’s not on me for not writing you in there, it’s on the computer,’” quipped Miles, a former St. Louis Cardinal infielder. “It won’t be my fault if somebody’s not in the lineup, I guess I’ll enjoy that.”
However, Miles and the Ballers’ coaching staff won’t have a complete day off. Ballers co-founder Paul Freedman confirmed that the AI can’t handle third-base coaching, so the B’s staff will still choose whether or not to send a runner.
Could AI truly play a significant role in baseball’s long-term future?
Artificial intelligence is everywhere, with AI being capable of generating images, writing articles, and suggesting a five-leg MLB parlay. It’s not unrealistic to imagine a manager eventually using a program like ChatGPT to decide whether he should hit his catcher leadoff or instead hit him in the middle of the order.
“One of the fun things about being a sports fan is being able to engage in conversations after the game about the key decisions,” Freedman said. “So this is a breadcrumb for us for what we think could be something, if it works well, could be part of a fan experience application or something that we do where, after a game, we kind of highlight what the key decisions were that our manager made and which ones kind of went against the grain — either for right or wrong.”
Everything that Freedman said makes sense, and Oakland is the perfect place for a team to test using AI. With just one tech company backing a Pioneer League team, AI could start calling lineups, picking pitchers, and even deciding when runners steal.
That said, the idea of AI replacing a manager entirely isn’t realistic. If ChatGPT or Grok can get basic facts wrong, why hand them the reins to run a game?
Ideally, teams avoid embracing AI the way they once did analytics. It can’t tell the whole story, and leaning on it to always set lineups or manage player development would be risky.
“These AI platforms aren’t watching the game or don’t see all of the intricate moments that happen throughout the game and the human element of the player,” Ballers catcher Tyler Lozano said. “I don’t think you’re going to lose that.”