MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke for the first time about the new partnership with the independent Atlantic League that will permit MLB to implement experimental rule changes.
As part of the three-year relationship jointly announced on Tuesday, MLB will install TrackMan radar technology in all eight Atlantic League ballparks. TrackMan provides all of the ball-tracking data of pitches and batted balls in MLB’s Statcast system.
Baseball America then reported that among the experiments would be the use of TrackMan to call balls and strikes instead of a human umpire. Even with the Atlantic League serving as a laboratory for testing the accuracy of the system, Manfred pumped the brakes on speculation that so-called robot umpires would reach MLB anytime soon.