Well, the first spring training games have debuted the new pitch-challenge protocol for baseball, in which players or coaches can challenge and ask for a robotic review of the umpire’s ball-or-strike call.

It involves head-tapping and pausing the game. Generally, it is entirely against the spirit of swift action that was reintroduced by the pitch clock.

But now I see it’s logical. A huge number of challenges are resulting in overturned calls. Umpires are getting caught calling balls on pitches right down the middle, and the weird animation exposes them, This is obviously a temporary stopgap that involves humiliating the human umpires for a year or two, and qualifying the robots in the eyes of fans. This will last until just about everyone concludes we need the robots to call balls and strikes full time.

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