Home plate umpire during the Angels-Padres game has a hilarious viral moment

The automated balls and strikes system is divisive amongst baseball fans, but it certainly caused an amusing moment during the Los Angeles Angels' fourth spring training game against the San Diego Padres. Mike Muchlinski was not necessarily having a bad day calling balls and strikes from behind the plate, but he was getting shown up over-and-over again by both Angels and Padres players successfully challenging his zone.

The home plate umpire had to announce several times during the game that his calls were getting overturned by the system. Then, before the top of the seventh inning, he made a self-effacing joke after a Padres pitcher challenged a call in which Muchlinski was "surprisingly" correct. It was the first and only time during the game in which a challenge was unsuccessful.

The challenge system is a public and immediate evaluation for umpires, who are prickly by nature when they have to deal with feedback mid-game. When a player challenges a ball or strike call, an animated video on the jumbotron shows everybody in the stadium where exactly the pitch was relative to the strike zone -- meaning that it displays who was in the right, and who was in the wrong. Umpires already face a high level of scrutiny with their job, and the challenge system adds another level to it. It's nice knowing that at least one umpire is taking it in stride and rolling with the punches. They're not all thin-skinned!

The ABS zone differs from an umpire's throughout the course of a game, which can cause confusion and frustration amongst fans, players, and coaches. In this case, it was nothing short of hilarious hearing the umpire be this self-deprecating after getting incorrect calls thrown in his face all game long.

Baseball is attempting to create a more objective strike zone via the "robo-umps" and it certainly will be implemented during regular season and playoff games in the coming years. While spring training and minor league games are experimenting with a challenge system, it feels inevitable that the HawkEye systems will feed the umpires calls via an earpiece and eradicate that human element of the game entirely. That system is referred to as "full ABS" and is even more controversial than the challenge system.

While these new MLB implementations will certainly create issues moving forward, it's refreshing to see fans, umpires, players, coaches, broadcasters etc. come together for a laugh. Thank you, Mike Muchlinski.

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