MLB says robot home plate umpires unlikely for 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball says robot home plate umpires are unlikely for 2025.

“We still have some technical issues,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday at a news conference following an owners meeting. “We haven’t made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we sort of hoped at this point. I think it’s becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for ’25.”

MLB has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in minor leagues since 2019. It is being used at all Triple-A parks this year for the second straight season, the robot alone for the first three games of each series and a human with a challenge system in the final three.

“There’s a growing consensus in large part based on what we’re hearing from players that the challenge form should be the form of ABS if and when we bring it to the big leagues, at least as a starting point,” Manfred said. “I think that’s a good decision.”

After instituting a pitch clock in 2023, MLB slowed innovation this year, with only small rules adjustments.

“One thing we did learn with the changes that we went through last year: taking the extra time to make sure you have it right is definitely the best approach,” Manfred said. “I think we’re going to use that same approach here.”

Manfred said discussions have not taken place with the players' association on the shape of an automated strike zone. There is little desire to call the strike zone as defined in the rule book as a cube. The ABS currently calls strikes solely based on where the ball crosses the midpoint of the plate, 8.5 inches from the front and the back.

“We have not started those conversations because we haven’t settled on what we think about it,” Manfred said.

MLB's meetings with players revealed a preference for a challenge system in order to continue to incentivize catcher framing skills.

“Originally we thought everybody was going to be wholeheartedly in favor of the idea if you can get it right every single time, that’s a great idea,” Manfred said. “One thing we’ve learned in these meetings is the players feel there could be other effects on the game that would be negative if you use it full-blown.

“Players feel that a catcher that frames is part of the — if you’ll let me use the word — art of the game, and that if in fact framing is no longer important, the kind of players that would occupy that position might be different than they are today," Manfred said. “You could hypothesize a world where instead of a framing catcher who’s focused on defense, the catching position becomes a more offensive player. That alters people’s careers. Those are real, legitimate concerns that we need to think all the way through before we jump off that bridge.”

John Slusher, Nike's executive vice president of global sports marketing, spoke to owners about the company's much-criticized new uniforms, which will be altered for 2025. MLB and Nike announced on May 3 that uniforms will have larger lettering on the back of jerseys and individual pants customization will be available to all players beginning in 2025.

“I think they appropriately took responsibility for the issues with respect to the new uniforms and the rollout of those uniforms,” Manfred said. “It’s the first time the owners had had heard this directly from Nike. They had been consistent with me about taking responsibility.”

Manfred said Nike said it will address "the letters, the non-customized pants, the sweat through and the lack of matching of the grays."

Manfred said Houston, Miami, San Juan and Tokyo will be sites for the 2026 World Baseball Classic. The final will be in Miami for the second tournament in a row, after 2023.

MLB has switched efforts to develop a tackier baseball and now is working with Rawlings, its supplier since 1977. MLB had been collaborating with Dow Chemical.

“Dow has kind of cried uncle,” Manfred said. “They spent a ton of money and worked with us. They were great partners, had a lot of good ideas and we just were not able to come up with a ball that was playable. We’re now focusing our efforts on a tacky ball with the Rawlings people.”

MLB is working on a broadcast strategy to cope with the decline in cable television.

Diamond Sports, which has been in bankruptcy proceedings since March 2023, has rights to 12 MLB teams.

“If I were a betting man, I think that Diamond continues to operate and pay our teams through the ’24 season,” Manfred said.

Manfred said there are two issues: whether MLB should take control of local rights from clubs and if that occurs, how to distribute revenue to clubs.

“For it to have any steam, the conversation about nationalization, I think it’s dependent on getting in the relatively short term some body of rights: 14, 15, 16, 17 clubs, and you’d start down the path from there,” Manfred said. "I’m not so naive as to believe two weeks from tomorrow I’m going to have all 30.”

The strikeout rate of 8.38 per team per game is down from 8.61 last year and the .240 big league batting average is down from .248 for last season and on track to be the lowest since 1968.

“Strikeout rate was down a little bit. That’s a positive,” Manfred said. “Batting average was down a little bit. That’s not necessarily a good thing if you’re looking for action in the game. But, again, it’s a part of a season and you just don’t know whether it means anything at this point."

Manfred said the attention given to the debuts of Baltimore second baseman Jackson Holliday and Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes was partly due to the decision to hold the amateur draft in conjunction with the All-Star Game starting in 2021 and broadcasting minor league games on MLB.tv.

“Over the long haul for players in terms of developing their individual brands, it’s a real improvement,” he said.

After moving the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver because of Georgia enacting a more restrictive voting rights law, MLB in November awarded the 2025 game to Truist Park. “One of the things we’ve learned over time is that the more we stay out of political issues, the better off we are,” Manfred said. “People like their sports separate from their politics. We got a fan base that’s all over the political spectrum and the safest thing for us to do is focus on baseball.”

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Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, displayed on a video monitor, speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred arrives at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at a press conference following an owners meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

LONDON (AP) — With less than three weeks until U.K. election day, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is running out of time to change an ominous tune for his Conservative Party.

Sunak, who in recent days traveled to a Group of Seven summit and a Swiss conference on the Ukraine war, has been dogged by questions about whether voters are about to bring his time in office to an abrupt end on July 4.

Polls continue to give the left-of-center opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer a double-digit lead over Sunak’s Conservatives, who have been in power for 14 years under five different prime ministers.

Sunak’s attempts to close the gap have had little apparent impact. The biggest splash he's made in the campaign so far was a gaffe – the prime minister’s decision to skip an international ceremony in France on June 6 marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He has been apologizing ever since.

Commentators are starting to talk about doomsday scenarios for the Conservatives, who have governed Britain for almost two-thirds of the past 100 years and won 365 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in the 2019 election.

University of Strathclyde politics professor John Curtice, one of Britain’s most respected polling experts, said that Conservative support is at its lowest point in U.K. polling history, and Sunak “must be beginning to doubt his decision to call the election early.”

In the past week, both Conservatives and Labour have released their election manifestos, the detailed packages of promises that form the centerpiece of their pitch to voters.

The Conservatives focused on reducing immigration and lowering taxes, pledging 17 billion pounds ($22 billion) in tax cuts by 2030, to be paid for largely by slashing welfare costs.

Labour promised to get the economy expanding after years of sluggish growth by establishing a new industrial policy, investing in infrastructure, cutting planning red tape and building 1.5 million new homes. It has promised not to increase personal taxes, but the Conservatives say the tax burden will rise under Labour.

Critics say neither party is being up front about the tax increases that would be needed to repair public services left threadbare after years of Conservative-led spending cuts, Brexit, a global pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The gaping hole in both parties’ manifestos is a reckoning with the scale and severity of the fiscal problems that will confront whoever wins the election,” said Hannah White, director of independent think tank the Institute for Government.

The Conservatives’ electoral prospects worsened when populist firebrand Nigel Farage entered the race at the helm of the right-wing party Reform U.K. Though it is unlikely to win many seats in Parliament, Reform’s vote share appears to be rising, largely at the expense of the Conservatives.

In recent days, the Conservative message has shifted from aiming at victory to warning that voting Reform could help Labour win a landslide.

“If you vote for anybody else other than a Conservative candidate, you’re going to get a Labour government with a large majority,” Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the BBC on Sunday.

Labour is concerned that its supporters will think the election is in the bag and stay home on polling day. Health spokesman Wes Streeting cautioned Sunday that there was “breathtaking complacency in the media” about the Labour Party’s poll lead.

Sunak, who has been in office for less than 20 months, insists that he's still fighting to win.

The United Kingdom's first Hindu prime minister told The Sunday Times that he was guided by the concept of dharma, which he said roughly translates as “doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.”

“Work as hard as you can, do what you believe is right, and try, and what will be will be,” he said.

This story has been corrected to show that the transport secretary's last name is Harper, not Haper.

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer arrives on board his election battle bus at a campaign event in Halesowen county of West Midlands, England, Thursday, June 13, 2024, after unveiling Labour's manifesto in Manchester for the forthcoming General Election on July 4. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives at the Ukraine peace summit in Obbürgen, Switzerland, Saturday, June 15, 2024. Switzerland is hosting scores of world leaders this weekend to try to map out the first steps toward peace in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)