RSS Feed

Tech Support

In world baseball history, the umpire's strike/ball decision has always been a 'hot potato' that has caused controversy over misjudgment.

Therefore, there have been discussions and preparations to introduce 'machine judgment', also known as 'robot referee', and for the first time among Korea-US-Japan professional baseball, machine judgment will be implemented in first-team games in Korea.

The KBO, which has been testing the system in second-tier games since 2020, has decided to introduce a machine judging system to first-tier games starting next year.

[Lee Kyung-ho/KBO Public Relations Team Leader: As a result of the board of directors meeting, it was agreed to introduce ABS (machine decision making) into the KBO league in the 2024 season. We expect the effect of improving fairness and reliability.]

The KBO will have a machine judge all balls, rather than having a referee first call the ball and then provide a video review, as is practiced in some U.S. minor leagues. I explained that it was.

The 'pitch clock', a 'time limit between pitches' that helps the game progress quickly, will also be implemented starting next year.

Starting this season, the Major League implemented a pitch clock that requires pitchers to throw the ball within 15 seconds when there are no runners and 20 seconds when there are runners, and it had the dramatic effect of shortening the game time by 24 minutes compared to last year.

The pitch clock was previously used in the Asian Games, and it is certain that it will be introduced in international competitions such as the WBC in the future, so it is expected to help strengthen the competitiveness of the national team.

The KBO also announced that it will push for the introduction of the so-called 'Peach Com' system, in which players exchange autographs by machine to shorten game time.