articleThe Brief MLB will introduce robot umpires in 2026 with the Automated Ball-Strike System. Major League Baseball will introduce robot umpires in 2026, following Tuesday’s approval of the Automated Ball/Strike System by the league’s 11-member competition committee. ABS will be introduced in the form of a challenge system in which the human umpire makes each call, which can be appealed to the computer. The challenge system adds a wrinkle. While the strike zone actually called by big league umpires tends to be oval in shape, the ABS strike zone is a rectangle, as in the rule book.