It has been revealed that Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) is moving forward with preparations to introduce ABS (Automated Ball-Strike System, or “robot umpire”), which automates ball and strike calls on pitches. The move has one eye on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and MLB has already adopted the system this season. While many replies on the thread welcomed the prospect of more consistent calls, plenty of others pointed out challenges the rollout would face — including which stadiums are equipped to support it, the possibility that pitchers like Kodai Senga, whose forkball could be disadvantaged by the shift in calling standards, and resistance from umpires themselves.
Sports Nippon [Sept 1, 2026, 02:00]
The automated pitch-calling system in use in Major League Baseball
Totally agree — that'll seriously raise the umpires' level.
4AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:07
They should at least allow optional adoption at whichever stadiums are ready in time for '27.
11AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:13
I wonder how this'll play out in Power Pros (the baseball video game). Sometimes a pitch is clearly in the zone but gets called a ball — I want that reviewed and overturned.
22AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:24
Re: #11 Does Power Pros even have a challenge system?
13AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:16
Financially, probably only MLB can afford this 💦 Poorer countries where baseball's a total minor sport are just gonna get left behind 🤣
16AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:19
Re: #13 Korea's had robot umpires since the year before last 😁
27AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:28
Re: #16 And that "Dominican Republic" (I mean Cuba) has turned into a soccer country now too 💦
23AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:24
The zone's different depending on the umpire, different depending on the day, and once it hits 3-0 the calls get sloppy as hell. What I'm getting at is, the umpire theatrics during Mino-san's at-bats (a nickname for a specific NPB figure) are way too much.
28AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:28
Re: #23 I bet that's actually sanctioned — shown off in umpire training or something, like 'this is how we do it,' with approval already given. Makes you wonder what the actual standard is.
26AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:27
They should just go full machine measurement like Korea does.
29AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:29
Re: #26 Exactly. The call comes through the umpire's earpiece instantly, and all they have to do is announce it. MLB and Japan probably don't want to do that because of umpire pride. They screw up constantly yet still act cocky.
33AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:33
In MLB, arguments over balls and strikes have basically disappeared. It's funny how the mood has shifted to 'well, it's our own fault for wasting a challenge on something pointless' even when you're out of challenges.
36AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:39
Re: #33 In exchange for less arguing over that, MLB's now dealing with garbage umpires who keep pulling stuff like 'retaliatory bad calls after a challenge,' 'ignoring challenge requests,' and 'gleefully ejecting anyone who complains.' So the push for a fully AI home-plate umpire is accelerating. People are saying it's funny — they set this up specifically so umpires wouldn't lose their jobs, and now it looks like they're going to lose them anyway.
41AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:42
Getting the calls right is great, but having umpires humiliated in front of the crowd is gonna wreck their mental health. Feels like it'd be more peaceful to just hand it all over to AI.
43AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:43
Re: #41 If the umpire's right, then it's the player who ends up embarrassed instead — fair's fair.
46AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:48
Sounds like with ABS, soft-breaking pitches have a harder time getting called strikes, so finesse pitchers are at a disadvantage. Apparently part of why Senga stopped winning is that his monster forkball isn't getting called strikes anymore.
53AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:51
Re: #46 Wasn't it just that it only looked like a strike, and it was actually a ball all along?
57AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:59
Re: #46 If there's a problem with the current ABS, it's that it treats the zone as a flat plane through the middle of the plate. The strike zone is technically supposed to be a three-dimensional space above the plate.
50AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:49
Re: #22 That's the thing, lol
77AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:27
Re: #50 At this point Power Pros has surpassed real NPB baseball.
55AnonymousSep 1, 2026 07:56
So cute —
62AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:03
Guess the "Tokyo Umps" (パイア, slang short for "umpire," used here as a nickname for certain notorious umpires) are going away. Once ABS came in, the "New York Umps" disappeared too lol
67AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:05
Re: #62 These days there's more of the "weird umps" (珍パイア, a pun on "bizarre" + umpire) around anyway.
68AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:07
Does NPB even have that kind of money?
82AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:40
Re: #68 NPB could just produce all the streaming feeds centrally and sell them to each platform — the "Pa-Tele" model (a nod to Pacific League's centralized streaming setup) already has a track record of success, so it'd be easy to implement. The only problem is a certain red-uniformed team.
74AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:21
Guess this'll make it harder to hold games at regional stadiums.
78AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:27
Re: #74 They're surely not going to run it at regional stadiums. These days almost every pro stadium has at least Hawk-Eye installed, but if a park doesn't have it, the game can still go on without it.
83AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:40
>Going forward, introducing ABS will require buy-in from the umpires' labor union.
That's probably the real sticking point, more than cost — very "Galapagos Japan" of them (i.e., isolated and out of step with global trends).
87AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:43
Re: #83 Calling a dead-center pitch a ball happens all the time, so they just don't want to be embarrassed.
85AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:42
NPB umpires are so bad that even with ABS, two challenges per game won't be nearly enough to fix anything — you'd need at least five.
89AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:44
Re: #85 Wait, don't challenges not get used up if the umpire was actually wrong? If so, that has nothing to do with how bad the umpires are.
90AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:45
The account that used to call out NPB's terrible umpires got pressured into shutting down, after all.
94AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:47
Ball-strike call data is already published for nearly every game on NPB+. What's left to do now is fold that into the actual games — the bad umpires are already exposed to fans, believe it or not.
95AnonymousSep 1, 2026 08:49
Re: #94 Yeah, but you need a paid subscription to see that. Since it's not exposed live during the broadcast like in MLB, even outrageous umpires only get called out by a small crowd.
114AnonymousSep 1, 2026 09:05
The system's already in place and could launch right away, so why wait until the year after next — is it the bad umpires pushing back?
119AnonymousSep 1, 2026 09:10
Re: #114 Probably because some regional stadiums still aren't equipped for it. If it's just a trial run and not actually used for real calls, not having it there is fine, I guess.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
MLB’s version of ABS doesn’t automatically call every pitch — the key detail is that it uses a “challenge system,” where the system only makes the final call when a catcher or batter contests a close pitch. This differs from the “fully automated” system used in Korea that came up in the thread, and it’s still unclear which approach NPB will adopt. There was also a lot of interest in the calling standards themselves — technical questions like whether the strike zone should be treated as a flat plane over the plate or a three-dimensional space, and how the system affects pitch types like the forkball, where the way a pitch looks and how the zone actually calls it can diverge. At the same time, commenters pointed to hurdles beyond cost, such as reaching an agreement with the umpires’ labor union and the limited number of stadiums currently equipped for it — suggesting the actual rollout timeline is still up in the air.
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