This afternoon in Glendale, Arizona, the Cubs and Dodgers will kick off the spring training slate with the first (unofficial) game of the 2025 season.
While this is certainly a joyous occasion for those of us starved for baseball, it’s also a notable one. The reason? This match up will introduce major league players to MLB’s Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system.
Here’s a tweet providing a quick rundown of how it works:
MLB is going to test the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system during Spring Training games.
This was system was used in MiLB last year where calls challenged by players were overturned 51% of the time, per MLB.