Even with robot umpires, MLB managers will find reasons to argue and get ejected

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Kevin Cash isn't worried that manager ejections will become a relic of baseball's past just because robot umpires have arrived to settle some debates.

“You only get two challenges, right? That can come up in the first inning,” the Tampa Bay Rays manager said.

Manager tantrums at umpires have long delighted fans: the Yankees’ Billy Martin kicking and throwing dirt on Dale Scott in 1988, Cincinnati’s Lou Piniella heaving first base into right field in anger at Dutch Rennert in 1990 and the Orioles' Earl Weaver going face to face with Bill Haller in 1980, each profanely calling the other a liar.

But Major League Baseball has given managers less to gripe about in the past two decades. Video reviews began for home run calls in August 2008 and were widely expanded to many decisions for the 2014 season. The Automated Ball-Strike System starts this year to allow challenges to human strike zone calls, dubbed robot umpires.

“Manager ejections have been down for a while now because of the replay system,” said Hall of Famer Jim Leyland, a three-time Manager of the Year tossed 73 times over 22 seasons. “I really like the ABS. I think it’s going to be great for the game.”

Last year, 61.5% of ejections among players, managers and coaches (99 of 161) were related to ball/strike calls, according to MLB, up slightly from 60.3% (114 of 189) in 2024. The figure included what MLB counted as inappropriate comments and conduct, and throwing equipment in protest.

“I’m in favor of anything that allows our technology to play in this game," Cash said. "We have so much of it. Why not use it?”

Each team gets two challenges per game, and a club keeps its challenge if successful. A team out of challenges gets an additional one in each extra inning.

“You’re going to take out the argument of balls and strikes initially,” Minnesota Twins manager Derek Shelton said. “I think the challenge is going to be after the challenges go away, how managers are and what they do? But I do think that there is going to be probably less general complaining about balls and strikes in the early going.”

Aaron Boone of the Yankees has led or tied for the most ejections in four straight seasons, and his nine in 2022 were the most since Atlanta's Bobby Cox was tossed 10 times in 2007.

Cox was thrown out a record 162 times, followed by John McGraw (121), Leo Durocher (100), Weaver (96), Tony La Russa (93) and Bruce Bochy (89).

Cincinnati's Terry Francona, starting his 25th season in a big league dugout, leads active managers with 54. Boone, beginning his ninth season, is second with 46.

Boone is less concerned over whether his dugout dissents will dwindle and more focused on keeping his players locked in if a challenge goes against them. If an umpire calls strike three to strand the bases loaded and the pitcher pumps a fist and bounds off the mound, how will the pitcher quickly regain composure if ABS reverses the call and forces a 3-2 offering?

“It's a whole new thing that pitchers have never dealt with. That’s an emotional thing you’ve got to deal with,” Boone said. “That’s something we’ve already addressed, same with the hitters to a lesser degree: that reset. How do you clear the mechanism?"

Bobby Valentine, who managed three major league teams over 16 seasons, will be honored by the New York Mets this May with a giveaway promotion commemorating one of his 44 ejections. After he was tossed by Randy Marsh on June 9, 1999, Valentine returned to the dugout with a fake mustache fashioned from eye black and sunglasses.

Valentine thinks players have evolved past the point where a manager could spark his team with a histrionic argument.

“I found that by the end of my career that that was only entertainment,” he said. "It didn’t fire anyone up except for my wife, who was worried about the fine that I was going to get.”

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 1979 file photo, Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver argues with third base umpire Steve Palermo, after Palermo ejected him during the second inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, front, reacts after getting ejected by home plate umpire Adam Beck (38) during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Tampa Bay Rays, April 20, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

FILE - Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella, right, argues with home plate umpire Ed Rapuano after Jim Edmonds, left, was ejected during the 11th inning of a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Sept. 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 21, 1976, file photo, New York Yankees manager Billy Martin argues a call with first base ump Bruce Froemming during the fourth game of baseball's World Series against the Cincinnati Reds at Yankee Stadium in New York. (AP Photo, File)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland experienced 2½ times more cyberattacks in 2025 compared to the previous year, and the numbers are constantly rising, a government official said Tuesday.

The attacks included a destructive infiltration of the country's energy system in December that was believed to be unprecedented among NATO and European Union members, and was suspected of originating in Russia.

Over the last year, Poland was the target of 270,000 cyberattacks, Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs Paweł Olszewski said Tuesday.

“We've been waging a war in cyberspace for many years now,” the official said. “The number of incidents and attacks has been increasing significantly and radically year after year.”

The government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has beefed up its cyber defenses since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, in response to what it believes to be a rising threat from Russia.

During the morning and afternoon of Dec. 29, coordinated cyberattacks hit a combined heat and power plant supplying heat to almost 500,000 customers, as well as multiple wind and solar farms in Poland.

Polish authorities suspected the cyberattacks were done by a single “threat actor,” with multiple experts pointing to culprits linked to Russian secret services.

The electricity supply wasn’t disrupted, but the nature of the sabotage alarmed Polish authorities so much that the agency CERT Polska, or Computer Emergency Response Team Poland, issued a public report in late January on technical details of the incident and asked the cyber community for any input on what happened.

“The attack was a significant escalation,” CERT head Marcin Dudek told The Associated Press.

“We’ve had such incidents in the past, but they were of the ransomware type, where the motivation of the attacker is financial," Dudek said. “In this case, there was no financial motivation — the motivation was just destruction.”

He said that Poland has seen only a few destructive incidents in the past and none of them were in the energy sector.

Dudek said that he wasn't aware of any other destructive cyberattacks on the energy sector in either NATO or EU countries. There have been espionage incidents and activist groups causing marginal damage, but “advanced attacks” like the December one in Poland are likely unprecedented, he said.

Had it targeted even larger energy units, it could have substantially impacted the stability of Poland's energy grid, Dudek said.

The Polish secret services haven't yet publicly identified an alleged culprit.

Dudek's team is authorized only to describe the modus operandi and point to a likely “threat actor” — cyber jargon for an individual or group engaging in malicious activity.

The CERT analysis looked at the Internet infrastructure used in the Polish attack, including domains and IP addresses, and found that they had been used previously by a Russian threat actor known as “Dragonfly,” and also called “Static Tundra” or “Berserk Bear.”

Dudek said Dragonfly has been known to target the energy sector, but so far not with a destructive attack.

According to an alert issued by the FBI in the United States in August 2025, Dragonfly is a cybersecurity cluster associated with FSB Center 16, a key unit within Russia’s Federal Security Service.

Experts unrelated to Polish authorities agree that the traces of the December attack lead back to Russia.

ESET, one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the EU, analyzed the malware used in the attack and concluded the culprit likely was “Sandworm,” another possible Russian actor previously associated with destructive attacks in Ukraine.

The U.S. government has in the past attributed Sandworm to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, or GRU.

Anton Cherepanov, senior malware researcher at ESET, told The Associated Press that “the use of data-wiping malware and its deployment” in the Polish case “are both techniques commonly employed by Sandworm.”

“We are not aware of any other recently active threat actors that have used data-wiping malware in their operations against targets in European Union countries,” Cherepanov added.

Whether Dragonfly or Sandworm, it would an actor previously affiliated with Russia. “Whether it’s these Russians or those Russians is a detail,” Cherepanov said.

The Russian Embassy in Warsaw didn't respond to requests for comment.

FILE - Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaks with the media as he arrives for the EU summit in Brussels, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)