Robot umpires system to be experimented with in several Brewers spring training games

Robot umpires are finally coming to Major League baseball...sort of. The Milwaukee Brewers will have several of their 2025 spring training games as experiments for league with the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system in place.

The ABS challenges have been in place in select minor league games the last few years and now MLB is experimenting with bringing the system to the majors. Now, no matter how successful the implementation is this spring, ABS challenges will not be happening in the 2025 regular season.

The plan for the league is for implementation in the 2026 regular season if everything goes well.

The human umpires will call the game as usual, but if there's a questionable pitch call, the pitcher or the hitter can call for a challenge and the ABS system will provide an answer. Teams will be given two challenges per game, but they get to keep their challenges if they continue to be successful.

How many Brewers spring training games will have ABS challenges in 2025?

The Brewers will have 12 spring training games with the ABS challenge system in place, per The Athletic. They play 31 games in their Cactus League schedule, so it's less than half of their schedule. The Brewers actually have a below-average number of games with ABS compared to the rest of the league.

Every team in baseball will at least get some experience with this system in spring. The Diamondbacks will get the most with 29 games with ABS while the rival Chicago Cubs have just seven and the Atlanta Braves have eight.

There are only seven teams that have fewer games with the ABS system on their schedule this spring than the Brewers. They are the Cubs, Braves, Red Sox, Athletics, Giants, Rays, and Nationals.

It has not been revealed exactly which games on the Brewers Cactus League schedule will be using ABS and which ones will not.

We can likely assume that the ABS system is only in place at certain spring training facilities. For example, the Diamondbacks and Rockies will have ABS at nearly all of their games and they both play at the same facility at Talking Stick. It's very likely that Talking Stick is one of those complexes with the technology in place for the challenge system and that when the Brewers play Arizona and Colorado this spring, those are going to be among the games where ABS is in place.

Fans have been pushing for a robo-ump system for years now and MLB is getting one step closer to implementing it with this spring training test.

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