Major League Baseball disabled custom tabs on dugout iPads when the second half of the season began Wednesday night, cutting off applications that could recommend substitutions, pitch calls, and other decisions traditionally made by players and coaches. The tablets retain league data and video. The live recommendation channel is what closed. [1]
That distinction echoes the paper's July 16 account of MLB publishing a 2027 schedule before labor peace exists. A calendar is an instrument, not a guarantee that games will be played. A software restriction is also an instrument, not proof that every club used artificial intelligence, that a game changed, or that anyone violated the new rule.
MLB executive Morgan Sword described the custom tabs in a June 11 memo to general managers, assistant general managers, and video coordinators. AP obtained the memo after the restriction took effect. It said teams had expanded the iPads beyond their intended purpose and that the midseason change gave clubs time to adjust. [1]
The rule redraws a boundary baseball has been negotiating for a decade. MLB allowed restricted dugout tablets late in the 2015 season and expanded them in 2016. Video disappeared during the shortened 2020 season after the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal and returned in 2021. [1] Each revision tried to separate legitimate preparation from assistance that can alter a live decision.
Video shows; software recommends
A coach reviewing a pitcher's previous delivery uses a record of what happened. A program recommending the next pitch or substitution converts that record into an instruction during the game. Both depend on data. Only one puts a machine-generated choice beside the person empowered to act.
That does not make the recommendation automatically superior or illicit. Models can be wrong, late, built on incomplete data, or ignored. The public record does not reveal which applications clubs installed, what inputs they used, how recommendations appeared, or whether coaches followed them. It establishes that MLB considered the function outside the tablet's intended role and removed access.
Former Mets reliever Adam Ottavino said the club had used an expensive AI program that helped choose pitches and perhaps other decisions. He said the Mets were the main team that prompted the crackdown and that other clubs also used such tools. The Mets did not comment to AP. [1] Ottavino's account establishes his knowledge and claim; it is not a league-wide audit.
The competition committee had reviewed the matter and found clubs compliant with existing regulations. [1] That finding sits beside the new prohibition. It suggests MLB changed the boundary rather than publicly announcing punishment for a past violation. A technology can be permissible under yesterday's rule and prohibited under today's without retroactively proving cheating.
The discourse outruns the denominator
One verified X user wrote, "The Old Heads 100% saw this coming," framing the ban as overdue. The Athletic's verified post said teams were, in many cases, installing custom applications beyond the iPads' intended purpose. The posts capture a traditionalist reaction and a reported mechanism. Neither supplies the number of clubs, a competitive effect, a violation, or a sanction.
Aaron Judge told AP he could not believe teams were making decisions from AI. Toronto manager John Schneider called real-time pitch-calling assistance strange. Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said AI was entering everyone's arena and warned that people who ignored it would be rolled over. [1] Their reactions expose the cultural dispute: whether recommendation software is foreign to baseball judgment or the next form of analysis.
Baseball has never separated human decisions from information. Scouting reports, video rooms, defensive shifts, biomechanical analysis, and probabilistic matchups all shape what a manager does. The practical line is not technology versus instinct. It is which information may reach which device at which moment, and whether every club plays under an inspectable rule.
The restriction begins that rule but does not complete it. AP's account does not publish the full memo, define every prohibited function, identify audit logs, specify retention requirements, or state penalties for circumvention. [1] A custom tab can disappear while the same recommendation moves to a coach before the game, a printout, another device, or a human intermediary. Enforcement depends on scope.
The next audit belongs to labor as well as competition
Machine recommendations also affect workers. Coaches and analysts may gain influence if their systems shape live calls, or lose it if a vendor's output replaces their judgment. Players may be evaluated through tools they cannot inspect. Vendors may hold club data and proprietary models beyond the reach of ordinary league review.
Those questions do not prove harm. They identify the records a mature policy needs: approved software, disclosed vendors, input and output logs, bargaining rights, independent review, and a route to challenge errors. MLB's competition concern is only one column.
By Friday, the custom tabs were inaccessible and clubs had begun the second half under the restriction. [1] No cited evidence showed that a particular recommendation changed a pitch, substitution, play, or result. No club had been publicly sanctioned, and no circumvention had been established.
The news is therefore precise. MLB permitted tablets for video and league data, watched custom applications become recommendation systems, and closed that channel. The two X posts call the move foreseeable and team-driven. AP shows the operating rule. What remains is the denominator, the audit, the labor effect, and the penalty that would make the new line enforceable.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos