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This is why ABS exists and should be celebrated by baseball fans.
During Thursday's Tigers-Braves game, home-plate umpire Roberto Ortiz was completely exposed by the computer umpire, which caught one of the most egregious missed calls since the ABS system was implemented on opening day.
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Umpire Roberto Ortiz calls catchers interference during the game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Aug. 10, 2024. (Kyle Rivas/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
How bad was the missed call? It left Tigers TV play-by-play guy Jason Benetti nearly speechless. "It is...yikes," Benetti said as the ABS system revealed that Ortiz missed a ball right down the heart of the plate.
"It is the reason for the challenge system," Benetti continued.
It turns out this isn't Ortiz's first rodeo with some rather bad missed calls. In September 2025, before ABS was instituted by Commissioner Rob Manfred and his MLB front office, Ortiz worked a Brewers-Padres game in which the Umpire Auditor account on X estimated he missed a whopping 25 calls.
Watch where these pitches ended up in the K-Zone squares:
It gets worse. In 2024, Ump Auditor reported that Ortiz missed 30 calls in a Pirates-Royals game and had a "correct call rate of only 82.5%." While we're at it, Ortiz worked a 2023 game where he called a pitch a strike when it was 5.27 inches off the plate, according to Ump Auditor.
Running out bad home-plate umpires might actually end up being a smart business decision by Major League Baseball. "What actually surprised me is how popular this is with fans," Manfred said of ABS. "When the challenge happens, everybody’s kind of glued to the Jumbotron. It’s amazing. … It’s a form of fan engagement."
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Joe Kinsey is the Senior Director of Content of OutKick.
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