PEORIA, Ariz. — You can take your pitch clocks and instant replay, your interleague games and expanded playoffs.
To Mariners manager Scott Servais, they won’t impact baseball as much as another proposed change that may be enacted by Major League Baseball in the near future.
Yes, robo-umps are coming fast, and when they get here, nothing will be quite the same.
“It will change the game dramatically. I think probably more than anything else in my lifetime in professional baseball,” Servais said.
The Mariners will get a taste of the robo-ump — a computerized system that calls balls and strikes via pitch-tracking devices installed at the ballpark — when they play the Diamondbacks on Friday at Salt River Fields in Scottsdale.