MLB's incoming challenge system isn't the blanket fix you think it is

So, you wanted robot umpires? You've got them. Sort of.

Major League Baseball will introduce the long-awaited and rigorously tested automated ball-strike challenge system beginning next year after an 11-person competition committee approved its implementation Tuesday.

The change will grant each team the opportunity to challenge two calls by the home plate umpire every game in 2026 and beyond. With the ability to retain your challenge if the team is vindicated by the replay review, this effectively presents unlimited challenges so long as you bat 1.000, as they say.

That's a good thing, right?

With approximately 90 games per week in MLB, that's roughly 360 opportunities for teams to attempt to overturn an incorrect umpire.

But, as Passan points out above, there are 1,000 incorrect calls.

So, MLB has done the calculus and decided that being wrong nearly 74% of the time is still acceptable.

How is this being celebrated as a win?

MLB has been on a heater when it comes to implementing new rules that speed up and modernize the game. The pitch clock has been wildly successful, limiting the defensive shift has gone so well even its loudest detractors have been quieted, and larger bases have brought back aggressive running.

The introduction of the ABS doesn't maintain this direction. It's a step to appease fans who don't actually know what they want.

Is there anything more frustrating in baseball right now than having the replay review room agonize over a pop-slide at second base for more than two minutes just to have the seemingly incorrect call upheld due to insufficient evidence to overturn?

Overturned balls and strikes will admittedly be a lot more seamless, decisive, and faster than that. But it's relevant because baseball fans believe they want replay review until they see it implemented. And then they'll realize all they wanted was correct calls.

A challenge system is a commitment to being right only sometimes - when the victim of the bad call feels it was too egregious to let slide.

If we borrow from the experience of watching other leagues that are already well into the replay review eras, ask an English Premier League fan if they enjoy when the referee makes the VAR symbol. Check in with your local hoops fan and see if they enjoy an extended stoppage during a playoff game to assess whether a hard foul qualifies as flagrant or not. Sports needs less of this, not more.

The notion of "correct calls" in sports is a mirage. The people playing the sports are fallible. Why should we expect our officiating to be any different? Not to mention, no current technology is perfect in knowing if the three-inch ball moving 100 mph crossed the 17-inch plate at a specific height that's dependent on the batter's size.

The options going forward are very simple:

• Admit that umpires are fallible human beings who can make mistakes and are indeed standing behind well-trained catchers who are actively trying to fool them hundreds of times per night.
• Adopt the automated strike zone as law.

Option 1 is admittedly my preference and likely that of the umpires' union as well. However, pitch-framing defenders are increasingly in the minority. That leaves us with the second option: Don't have umpires make the original call at all.

Don't create any need to slow down the game a handful of times just because a 2-0 pitch on the edge of the zone in the fourth inning of Rays-Reds was incorrectly called a strike by an imperceptible margin.

Half measures simply aren't worth celebrating.