MLB's All-Star ABS twist could quietly wreck the rest of the season

With less than a week until the MLB All-Star Game next Tuesday, there's a twist. Out of the blue, the league announced that the Automatic Balls and Strikes challenge system (ABS) will be in effect for the Midsummer Classic.

"MLB officials added the feature to the annual exhibition game knowing it could be a precursor to becoming a permanent part of the Major Leagues as soon as next year," writes ESPN's Jesse Rogers. ABS has been in effect in the Minor Leagues since 2019 and it was incorporated into 2025 spring training games.

This is an inevitable step toward an inevitable conclusion for MLB. The idea that a foolproof balls-and-strikes arbiter exists and that the league isn't using it has long felt silly. I am generally a proponent of keeping the game as human as possible — there's something quintessential about the volatility of umpires and the core truth of human error — but fans aren't going to respond well to moments like this when there is a better alternative.

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MLB to tease ABS system at All-Star Game

The ABS system will, in the words of Jeff Passan, probably be a "net positive" for the game. One almost wonders how it took this long to implement, as we've known about ABS and its efficacy for years now. All sports fans complain about the officials, but few entities can inspire vitriol quite like MLB umpires. Installing a measure to check their mistakes and avoid the catastrophe of a game-altering bad call feels like a no-brainer.

That said ... what's with this soft-launch strategy in spring training and now the All-Star Game? What exactly is the holdup? At a certain point, it becomes a tease. You are showing fans a better future, but won't let them experience it in games that matter.

To quote Kevin Garnett in the 2019 smash hit Uncut Gems:

"Why the [redacted] would you show me something if I couldn't have it then?"

Will this truly ruin the rest of the regular season for fans? Probably not. Baseball is a beautiful game and there will be plenty to enjoy about it, even without ABS. We've made it more than a century with regular joes behind home plate, we can probably survive another few months until the robot takeover.

But, MLB is risking an optics nightmare by taunting fans with this perfect solution to their No. 1 gripe, only to leave it on the shelf when the games actually count for something. If the ABS system works like a charm next Tuesday and then a Wild Card team loses ground in the standings a few weeks later on a bad call, the responses will be ... loud.