Major League Baseball has entered a new era of balls and strikes in 2026.
The MLB season will incorporate the automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system for the first time.
It has already been used in the minor leagues, and allows a pitcher, batter or catcher to challenge a given call a certain amount of times each game.
The computerized strike zone will then tell the home-plate umpire whether the original call was correct or not.
It’s not a fully automated zone. The home-plate ump still makes every pitch call. There’s just a means for the call to be challenged.
Because the computer has an officially defined zone, though, it has changed shape slightly.
MORE: How Jose Ramirez is on pace to become Cleveland’s Derek Jeter
What the new strike zone looks like
Human umpires have always had a tendency to be a little more generous in certain spots and a little less generous than others.
That’s reflected here, where the new zone has perfectly straight lines and corners, unlike the aggregate human zone:
The difference in the strike zone now with the challenge system. It’s a little smaller than the umpire called zone. pic.twitter.com/TKbeKU9uBp
— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) February 13, 2026
MORE: Luis Arraez is MLB’s perfect misfit in 2026
It’ll take some getting used to for players, who are incredibly finely tuned on the zone. Someone like Juan Soto knows exactly how an umpire is going to call things. The ABS zone could throw off even the best plate vision, at least for a short time.
Eventually, everyone will get used to the system, and it should help eliminate some of the most egregious missed calls. And in the end, that should be good for the game.
