SEOUL, The South Korean baseball league announced Monday it ran a joint training camp for its umpires and scorers last week to help them prepare for a new set of rules for the 2024 season.
The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) said it brought together umpires and scorers at Masan Stadium in Changwon, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, from Wednesday to Sunday to get them acclimated to the automated ball-strike system (ABS) and pitch clock. The league added that college and high school teams played exhibition games under the new system Thursday and Saturday, with the umpires and official scorers at camp being put in live game situations with the new systems for the first time.
Prior to the games, the KBO hosted a seminar Wednesday.
Starting in the 2024 regular season, the KBO will adopt the ABS, colloquially called the robot umpire, to ensure accurate calls. The ABS uses tracking technology to determine balls and strikes, and relays the call to the home plate umpire through an earpiece.
The league ha
d initially proposed putting the pitch clock in place for 2024, but the board of directors, made up of 10 club presidents, decided in January to put it on a test run for the first half of the new season. The league will then decide whether to use the pitch clock on a full basis in the second half. The pitch clock will be in full use from the start in the Futures League, the KBO’s minor league.
Pitchers must deliver a pitch within 18 seconds with the bases empty, and 23 seconds with runners on. The KBO hopes the pitch clock will help speed up games, as it did so in Major League Baseball (MLB) in its first year in 2023.
In 2023, a nine-inning game went for three hours and 12 minutes on average in the KBO.
In MLB, a nine-inning contest lasted 2:40 in 2023, more than 20 minutes shorter than in 2022.
The KBO said it will send umpires and scorers to scrimmages throughout spring training to help the officials learn the new systems quickly. The KBO will also have league officials visit spring training sites in Ja
pan and in the United States to hold seminars for clubs.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
