Categories: Features

‘I hope it doesn’t happen’: Phillies weigh in on automated strike zone

Aaron Nola is strongly opposed to an automated strike zone. (Brandon Sloter/Icon Sportswire)

SAN FRANCISCO — The robots are coming. At some point. Not yet. But they’re coming. Probably.

The question is when. And how. And what.

And, for some, why.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred addressed the hot-button issue of the automated strike zone on Thursday and confirmed the presupposed: Humans will call balls and strikes — all of them — in the Major Leagues next season. The league is still exploring what an automated ball-strike system would look like if it’s ever implemented, but it would likely come in the form of a challenge system, and there are far too many kinks to iron out before it’s installed.

One of the issues Manfred indicated is the effect that the loss of framing would have on the “art” of the game and the future of the catcher position at large, suggesting it may become a more offense-oriented position and accordingly alter players’ careers.

Phillies backup catcher Garrett Stubbs agreed with the former concern but stopped short of suggesting that the value of the position would change all that much with an automated zone.

“I think the most important things about what we do as our job is outside of even the physical things. You know, those relationships with your pitchers, the cerebral part of calling a game,” Stubbs told Phillies Nation. “And obviously, catching the ball and framing is a part of that, throwing and blocking also a part of that. You can’t just throw anybody back there, regardless of whether you take framing out of the game or not … I think it’ll still remain one of the most important positions on the field.”

Asked point blank whether, if the choice was his, Stubbs would opt for a fully automated zone, a challenge system or the status quo, Stubbs chose the challenge. There’s a tradeoff, though. “I can see all sides of it, right? I think that I always feel the call should be right,” he said. But even if he’s in favor of a challenge system, Stubbs still feels as though the game loses something if framing becomes obsolete.

It’s not just catchers who feel that way. It’s their batterymates, too, like Aaron Nola. You’d think Nola’s reasoning for supporting framing is that, as a pitcher, he wants pitches outside the zone to have a chance at becoming strikes.

But the hypothetical he posed was the opposite.

“I just think of something that clips the box, and the catcher catches it on the ground — they call it a strike three or something like that,” Nola said. “That’s a bad look, in my opinion.”

Fittingly, as somewhat of a throwback type of pitcher, Nola is a fan of the way the game has always been. He likes baseball’s human element.

Pitchers have their own tendencies. Batters have theirs. Even fielders. Well, so do umpires — and it’s a pitcher’s job to know that, he argues.

“I really hope it never comes into play,” Nola said of the automated zone. “I think it really would be bad for the game.”

He’s staunchly opposed to the full-throttle ABS. But he’s even wary of the challenge system, how exactly it would look (it’s hard to get it perfect, he said, something Manfred also expressed) — and how exactly it could be manipulated.

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“How do you know that they’re not gonna change it for certain guys, or certain — Sunday Night Baseball, or a midweek day game or something like that?” Nola said. “I mean, we don’t know that.”

MLB has used multiple different types of baseballs in a given season, studies have shown, and players have accused the league of juicing baseballs for marquee games like the 2021 Field of Dreams Game that saw the Yankees and White Sox deposit eight total home runs into corn. It’s certainly reasonable to wonder whether the automated strike zone could be fiddled with in a way that the baseball conceivably can be, also.

Regarding the imperfection of the zone itself, Stubbs shares that concern, too. His endorsement of the challenge system is predicated, of course, on the zone being accurate — and on the league ensuring that players can’t find loopholes to game the system, as some have tried with the pitch clock. (Think of Max Scherzer’s experimentation last spring.)

But Stubbs sees a way the technology can work. He points to tennis, where players can immediately invoke a challenge using the Hawk-Eye replay system, which can deliver an instantaneous and extremely accurate verdict.

In his eyes, a challenge system — one that relies on a correct strike zone — balances the best of multiple worlds.

“The challenge system, I think, gives leeway for that [framing] art to still be a part of the game, while still, in those big moments, those hitters being able to challenge balls and strikes, as well as pitchers and catchers being able to challenge balls and strikes,” Stubbs said. “So, if we’re really gonna implement technology in the game, I think go ahead. But make sure that it’s all correct and that the system is somewhat fool-proof before we start using it.”

For some, this is a problem to weigh in on later — not just once MLB has a clearer sense of when the automated zone or challenge system will be implemented and what it may look like, but once the new system has actually been put into place and used.

MLB has instituted myriad rule changes over the past few years. Some are more popular than others, but almost all have seen public opinion shift even since they were first introduced at the big-league level. Think of the designated hitter in the National League, or the pitch clock.

“I learned a long time ago that when they change the rules, don’t even think about it,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said when asked about the automated zone, citing replay review and the three-batter minimum as rules he initially questioned but have since won his support. “So until we get it and it’s in, I really don’t know what to think of it.”

Other players simply have no opinion on it and probably won’t even once it’s in play.

“I don’t really care much, man,” Nick Castellanos said.

But there’s little doubt that if an automated zone is put into place, to any degree, it will change the game. Imagine a world without ejections like Bryce Harper’s on Saturday in Colorado, or in which umpire retirements like Ángel Hernández’s are met with relative indifference.

It will be a sea change, surely. And it will not be unanimous. A poll of 100 players would probably yield 75 different opinions and 25 abstentions.

But when does a new rule yield anything else?

“As long as we stay away from [gaming a fully automated zone],” Stubbs said, “I think any implementation of whether it be new rules or a challenge system and technology, I think the game’s headed in the right direction.”

“I hope,” Nola said, “it doesn’t happen.”