It appears the urge to turn all critical thinking over to AI has not escaped Major League Baseball teams. Regular baseball viewers have become accustomed to seeing players and staff huddled around tablets in the dugout. The expectation is that the devices are used for reviewing performance and maybe crunching last-minute stats, but apparently MLB officials have intervened to prevent teams from using the hardware for running generative AI. League officials have taken the unusual step of making a mid-season policy change to crack down on the use of custom apps that would take over “recommendations regarding substitutions, pitch calling, and other in-game decisions traditionally made by players and coaches.”
The Athletic reported that the news was delivered via a memo from the commissioner’s office on June 11. Sources told the publication as many as a third of teams were using tablets for these unintended purposes, although no clubs will be facing any punishment after an MLB review determined that all organizations were now compliant with the new rules, which took effect yesterday.
In-game iPad use was subjected to increased restrictions after a sign-stealing scandal surfaced in 2021. In the intervening years, teams began pushing for more lenience, which the commission is now walking back. “Gotta stop the cheating before there’s cheating now,” an unnamed front office official told The Athletic.
Baseball is heaven for stat nerds, and crunching a lot of data quickly is one of the best uses for AI. Sure, there may be a statistically proven best decision at any given time, but once you throw physical, mental and emotional performance into the mix, the mathematically correct answer may not in fact be the best one. Tech is great as a backup, like with the new ABS system, but using it as a replacement for brains and intuition sounds like a quick way to suck all the joy out of the sport. A game of baseball is not identical to a game of chess, and we shouldn’t encourage it to be.
