{"paper":{"title":"Inside Baseball: The Automated Ball-Strike System as an Object Lesson in Technological Rule Enforcement","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"Even a clearly defined rule like the baseball strike zone demands a complex translation process before it can be automated by technology.","cross_cats":["cs.HC"],"primary_cat":"cs.CY","authors_text":"Andrea Wen-Yi Wang, David Mimno, Karen Levy, Malte F. Jung, Waki Kamino","submitted_at":"2026-05-15T17:45:04Z","abstract_excerpt":"Clearly-defined rules are often assumed to be straightforward to automate and evaluate. We challenge this assumption through an in-depth study of Major League Baseball's (MLB) seven-year experimentation with the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS). ABS is envisioned to call balls and strikes accurately: a seemingly straightforward use of technology to objectively determine the distance between a pitch and the strike zone. Although the strike zone is an area clearly defined in the rulebook, it took MLB seven years to figure out how to automate calling balls and strikes with ABS, showing how even"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"Although the strike zone is an area clearly defined in the rulebook, it took MLB seven years to figure out how to automate calling balls and strikes with ABS, showing how even seemingly straightforward rules require a complex translation process to operationalize via technological systems.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That the primary sources of implementation difficulty are the historical contestation of ground truth and the need to balance stakeholder values in the existing ecosystem, rather than purely technical measurement challenges or other unexamined factors.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"A qualitative case study of MLB's ABS shows that technological enforcement of rules involves bridging historically contested ground truths and balancing stakeholder ecosystems rather than simple measurement of distance to a formal zone.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Even a clearly defined rule like the baseball strike zone demands a complex translation process before it can be automated by technology.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"151640dc3e7cec28536c2f3ce5bbd7cd4d71efbc68323af372333a8d985cd37a"},"source":{"id":"2605.16237","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":"3c89be3b-871a-40d3-8549-d93705ccf2d5","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-19T21:40:02.630893Z","strongest_claim":"Although the strike zone is an area clearly defined in the rulebook, it took MLB seven years to figure out how to automate calling balls and strikes with ABS, showing how even seemingly straightforward rules require a complex translation process to operationalize via technological systems.","one_line_summary":"A qualitative case study of MLB's ABS shows that technological enforcement of rules involves bridging historically contested ground truths and balancing stakeholder ecosystems rather than simple measurement of distance to a formal zone.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That the primary sources of implementation difficulty are the historical contestation of ground truth and the need to balance stakeholder values in the existing ecosystem, rather than purely technical measurement challenges or other unexamined factors.","pith_extraction_headline":"Even a clearly defined rule like the baseball strike zone demands a complex translation process before it can be automated by technology."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.16237/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"doi_title_agreement","ran_at":"2026-05-19T22:01:23.199931Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T21:51:54.942055Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"shingle_duplication","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:49:42.195294Z","status":"skipped","version":"0.1.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"citation_quote_validity","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:49:41.803076Z","status":"skipped","version":"0.1.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:33:23.113805Z","status":"skipped","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"external_links","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:31:26.822901Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"claim_evidence","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:01:55.616845Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"cited_work_retraction","ran_at":"2026-05-19T16:51:57.709987Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"5d363377fdc4f9385e4a25d366a2fcbea2d9252987f7b22dc616ef0a7f78fda6"},"references":{"count":84,"sample":[{"doi":"","year":2023,"title":"MLB on track to expand robot umps to all Triple-A ballparks.AP News(Jan","work_id":"56a2b6e7-bd8a-4748-b6c8-49404fd5b7f2","ref_index":1,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"10.1145/3290605.3300760","year":2019,"title":"Hall, and Michael Nebeling","work_id":"339df43f-416b-4413-abf1-1b515b650cc6","ref_index":2,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.02.001","year":2006,"title":"Louise Amoore. 2006. Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror.Political Geography25, 3 (March 2006), 336–351. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.02.001","work_id":"7c06b860-4b4b-4819-ab34-bb86f8aee9b0","ref_index":3,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102547","year":2024,"title":"Louise Amoore. 2024. The deep border.Political Geography109 (March 2024), 102547. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102547","work_id":"e2b91d82-85af-4718-bdba-26b43a9c90a5","ref_index":4,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":1985,"title":"L. A. Times Archives. 1985. On Close Calls.Los Angeles Times(Oct. 1985). https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-10-22-me- 12377-story.html Section: Sports","work_id":"e4971099-e293-4495-86b9-5507aad8824c","ref_index":5,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false}],"resolved_work":84,"snapshot_sha256":"db99bdad95d72190995e7d36e73cc268fc76c13f11f39ca346511aa83bc0ba25","internal_anchors":1},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}