By JANIE McCAULEY
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — José Caballero of the New York Yankees lost his first challenge to Major League Baseball’s so-called robot umpire, unsuccessfully appealing a strike thrown by San Francisco Giants right-handed starter Logan Webb in the season opener Wednesday night.
Webb opened the fourth inning with a 90.7 mph sinker to the high inside corner that Bill Miller — a major league umpire since 1997 — called a strike. Caballero touched his helmet, and the 12 Hawk-Eye cameras of the Automated Ball and Strike System ratified Miller’s decision on a graph displayed on the screen at Oracle Park.
New York was leading 5-0 at the time. Panama’s Caballero drove in the first run with an RBI double in a five-run second inning off Webb, who recorded his 1,000th career strikeout in the fourth.
The automated system had been tested in the minor leagues since 2019 and was used during Major League spring training in 2025 and ’26. Some managers have noted that they will still find ways to argue and get ejected.
Before Wednesday’s game, Yankees manager Aaron Boone spoke in support of the new system and the importance of talking to his team ahead of time about decisions on challenges.
“I hope so. We’ve had a lot of dialogue about it; it’s something we’ve invested a lot in, for sure. It’s become one of the things that I’ve tried to lead a little bit of the effort on. Another meeting, late in the spring, with all the position players and the receivers, was basically going over different cases that came up and giving them my opinion. I’ve been very direct with them during the spring as to, after it happens, if I thought one was really good or, conversely, if one was terrible,” he responded. Boone, asked if he was excited.
Boone stressed that this will be a learning process for everyone involved.
“I have tried to be very direct with them and explain why,” he said. “I feel like we’re going to be good at this; that’s the expectation. I’m sure we’ll continue to evolve with it.”
New San Francisco manager Tony Vitello, who came to the Giants from the University of Tennessee with no professional experience as a player or coach, said he had to remind himself earlier Wednesday that, at times, robots could take over.
“I have to be honest with you: one thing I was looking at was who the umpires are tonight. You go on Google and the first thing you see is that there’s going to be a robot. And it was only for a millisecond, but it kind of scared me,” Vitello said.
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