The Machine Behind the Plate: Is Baseball Still Human?

The moment the umpire disappears is so quiet, you almost miss it. There’s still the crack of the bat, the murmur of the crowd, the chalky hum of tradition. But when the pitch crosses the plate and a disembodied voice calls it a strike, something ancient evaporates in real time. At the 2025 MLB All-Star Game, for the first time, every ball and strike will be called by a machine. A ghost in the shell of America’s pastime.

No arguments. No flared tempers. No eyes narrowed behind the mask. Just cold precision, served in milliseconds. Baseball—once a sport that thrived on its fallibility—is trying on perfection. And the fit is… unsettling.

A Beautiful Flaw, Now Flattened

For over a century, the strike zone was art, not code. “You had to know an umpire’s mood, not just the rules,” one retired catcher once mused. “That was the game within the game.” But now? The zone is etched in data. What was once organic and arguable is now binary and silent. There’s no nuance in a sensor, no drama in algorithmic judgment. You don’t argue with a robot—you just submit.

The pitcher’s craft has been reduced to geometry. The catcher’s framing—an entire defensive ballet—rendered meaningless. There’s an eerie brilliance to it all, sure. But there’s also a question that no one seems willing to ask out loud: what are we losing in the pursuit of flawless accuracy?

The Illusion of Fairness and the Seduction of Control

The league calls it innovation. Fans call it long overdue. And yes, maybe it’s fairer. Maybe the days of blown calls in high-stakes games needed to die. But fairness isn’t always beauty. And precision doesn’t always make for passion. There’s something almost Orwellian in the idea that a game once defined by unpredictability is being refitted to run like code.

We love baseball not just because it mirrors life, but because it reflects its messiness. Bad calls. Hot tempers. Redemption arcs. By erasing the umpire’s subjectivity, MLB might also be erasing something deeper—our collective willingness to live with imperfection.

So we’re left wondering: when the human error is gone, what’s left to yell about? What’s left to believe in?