The robot ump was used in all AAA stadiums last season. If I read it right half the time they used it to call all pitches. The other half of the time the ump called ball and strikes and the team could challenge up to three times a game. The fact that it was in AAA last year means they are looking at it to happen sooner rather than later.
Given the absolutely terrible pitch-calling in the majors, particularly from a few umps who somehow keep their jobs, this change cannot come quickly enough.
Now, if MLB would fire those bad umpires and tell the others to do better, I could live with that. But MLB doesn’t seem to care about this aspect of the game.
The umpires are unionized. I don’t think that mlb can just fire them.
Umpire ball/strike accuracy has gotten BETTER over the last ten years as they’ve been getting actual objective feedback on how they are doing.
It was much, much, much worse back in the day; when I was a kid umpire strike zones were ludicrously inconsistent.
The fact it’s still not good enough is largely because humans just aren’t able to do this.