MLB Bans AI‑Powered iPad Tabs in Dugouts

In early June the league’s baseball‑operations brass sent a surprisingly blunt memo to every general manager and assistant GM. Morgan Sword, the executive vice‑president of baseball operations, wrote that the use of “custom tabs” on dugout iPads had crept far beyond video replay and scouting reports. According to the memo, some clubs were actually feeding coaches real‑time substitution suggestions, pitch‑calling cues and other strategic nudges generated by artificial‑intelligence programs.

Effective the week of mid‑season, the memo says, all such tabs must be disabled. The league isn’t banning iPads outright—players can still watch replays or check stats—but any software that offers “recommendations regarding substitutions, pitch calling, and other in‑game decisions” is out. The wording feels almost like a warning shot, as if the league finally decided it had enough evidence that AI was slipping into the on‑field decision‑making process.

Former Mets reliever Adam Ottavino, appearing on a “Baseball & Coffee” livestream, confirmed the rumors. He claimed that Mets owner Steve Cohen had poured “several hundred thousand dollars” into a proprietary AI system that could suggest pitches in real time. Ottavino said MLB “cracked down” as soon as the memo got out, though he didn’t disclose how far the technology had actually gotten.

Even the Yankees’ captain, Aaron Judge, seemed taken aback. He told a friend he’d read an article in The Athletic about AI being used to analyze hitters on the fly, and that the sudden ban felt like “the league looking over our shoulders.” Judge’s reaction underscores a growing unease among players who have long trusted their instincts over a computer’s cold calculus.

What’s clear is that baseball is at a crossroads. Teams have been pushing the envelope with machine‑learning models, big‑data dashboards and now, apparently, in‑dugout algorithms that whisper suggestions to coaches. The new rule doesn’t spell an end to analytics—far from it—but it does draw a line between data that informs and software that decides.

Because the memo itself hasn’t been made public by MLB, the details remain a bit fuzzy. Sports‑news outlets beyond Breitbart have yet to publish the full text, and the exact technical definition of a “custom tab” remains unclear. Still, the message is unmistakable: the league will tolerate numbers, but not a robot that tells you when to pull the starter.