Major League Baseball’s umpires are doing a better job calling balls and strikes than ever before. But it’s time to absolve them of that responsibility – at least partially.

The reason is simple: The information is available. All 30 major league parks – and shoot, all 30 at Triple-A – are equipped with elaborate 12-camera systems that measure everything about a pitch: its spin rate, its break horizontally and vertically, its velocity. They can sure as heck measure whether it’s a ball or a strike.

Umpiring was once considered an art, and each ump had his own style – not to mention his own strike zone. It’s not the umpires’ fault that it now should be a science. A sport that had the reputation for resisting change suddenly gets credit for embracing it – for forcing it – because the next person I meet who doesn’t like the pitch clock that debuted this season will be the first.

The implementation of balls and strikes called by technology isn’t as easy or impactful as the pitch clock. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen. It should – with care – because an argument against is an argument in favor of the possibility of egregiously missed calls in immense moments.

Back up a bit. Baseball’s existing replay system has been in place for a decade, and it is, by now, indispensable. If a runner at second is obviously safe but is called out, and everyone in the stadium has access to that fact through replays on their phones or on the video board, in the name of Don Denkinger, shouldn’t someone correct the guy who made the call? (Don’t know Denkinger? Find a St. Louis Cardinals fan who remembers Game 6 of the 1985 World Series and a badly blown call at first. She or he will fill you in.)

What’s lost in a world controlled by replay is some color. There’s no reason for an Earl Weaver or a Tommy Lasorda to toss his cap and kick at the dirt if the correct call is (eventually) going to be made anyway. Which is one thing that came to mind last week, when the Washington Nationals were exasperated by a third-strike call from home plate umpire Doug Eddings – a 25-year MLB veteran – on CJ Abrams, who took a slider below the knees from Arizona lefty Tommy Henry and was called out anyway.

In the aftermath, Nationals Manager Dave Martinez emerged from the dugout to give Eddings an earful and was ejected after delivering one final over-the-shoulder barb. From there came the kind of theater you don’t see much anymore – Martinez getting down in the dirt at the plate to show Eddings how low the pitch was.

So, then, time for automatic ball-strike calls, right, Davey?

“I’m going to date myself,” Martinez said. “I played in the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s. The umpires, they really don’t bother me. It’s part of it. Hey, they’re not perfect. Neither is anybody else. And those things happen. It’s just, it’s when it happens. That’s the thing that really frustrates me a lot. In crucial situations, man, you got to bear down.”

In the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, sure. But now – why? If Martinez’s team was so frustrated by Eddings’ missed call on Abrams, then why rely on a human being to “bear down” in the moment when the information is readily available?

Plus, one version of a new system that MLB has been testing – in the Arizona Fall League for elite prospects last year and for all of Triple-A this season – introduces a different human element, if that’s what you’re after. In 2023, the first three games of every six-game Class AAA series have ball-strike calls strictly made by the Hawk-Eye tracking system that involves those dozen cameras in each park, a setup known as the “automated ball-strike system,” or ABS. The last three games have the umps making the calls but allow teams to protest and have a call overturned based on the info provided by Hawk-Eye.

The process: Each team begins a game with three challenges for balls and strikes. The challenges must be made in the moment by the player, so there’s even some strategy involved: Does a hitter risk wasting a challenge on a 1-1 pitch with the bases empty in the first when it might be better used on a 2-2 pitch with runners on second and third in the eighth?

The resolution comes in real time, too. If a hitter challenges a strike call, the image of the pitch comes up on the scoreboard. The ump is either vindicated or corrected. If the hitter is right and the call is overturned, his team retains its challenges. If the ump was right and a strike was correctly called as such, that team loses one of its challenges. Think line calls in tennis, which are now essentially determined by technology. There’s even some tension in the unveiling.

I love this plan. Imagine how the dynamics might work out. Might Max Scherzer and Buck Showalter of the New York Mets, say, or San Diego’s Manny Machado and Bob Melvin have different opinions on when and if a challenge should be used? The potential for intrateam turmoil could be a fun sideshow.

That, of course, would just be ancillary drama. The result would be more important: More pitches would be called correctly than ever before.

Implementation is delicate, for sure. For 150 years of professional baseball, the strike zone has never been called consistently – be it because of era, umpire or situation. The zone needs to be able to expand when rain is on the way or in the late innings of a blowout, just for players, fans and umps to keep their sanity. Players might argue that the computer reads the strike zone differently in, say, Washington than it does in Baltimore, but that’s just replacing paranoia about human bias with paranoia about computers.

This isn’t an argument that comes because umpires are worse than they once were. They’re not. Umps can now review their work via technology and, last season, their success rate on ball-strike calls was north of 92 percent. A popular Twitter account, @umpscorecards, reviews the work of every home plate umpire every day. They’re mostly outstanding, even if they’re only remembered for the small fraction of calls that go wrong.

Why put them – why put players and teams and fans – through that when the technology is there to turn wrongs into rights? More than that: Why risk allowing a postseason game to change on an obvious strike that is called a ball when we know it can be reversed?

Baseball is no longer stodgy. It is progressive. Keep going.

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