Logan Gilbert gets badly burned by MLB’s wait for robot umps in ALCS Game 2

If October is about execution, Game 2 was about interpretation, too. Seattle struck first, Julio Rodríguez detonated a first-inning, three-run blast that turned a hostile crowd into a hush. The Mariners had Logan Gilbert on the hill, the bullpen mapped, and a game script that made perfect sense: get ahead, land first-pitch strikes, ride soft contact. And then the zone started shrinking like a sweater in a hot dryer. 

This is where the league’s slow walk on automated strike zone (ABS) tech stops being a theoretical debate and starts impacting careers in real time. You could feel it from the dugout rail: a good pitch becomes a “try again,” a defensive count turns hitter-friendly, and the inning that was supposed to end starts breeding extra pitches, extra baserunners, extra chaos. It wasn’t just Seattle barking at clouds; both dugouts learned quickly they’d need to beat not only the opponent but the calibration behind the plate.

ALCS Game 2 calls fuel robot-ump urgency after Gilbert’s start flips

The flashpoint came early. Bottom of the 2nd inning, Mariners up 3–2, two strikes on George Springer — already a tone-setter in this series, and Gilbert executed the plan. In a 2-2 count, he painted a fastball at the knees on the black. Ball.

Then he absolutely dotted a front-hip splitter that nicked the inside edge. Ball again. Cal Raleigh sold both.

Instead of a strikeout and a jog to the dugout, it became a walk that reopened the inning’s door. Three pitches later, Nathan Lukes rifled a single to right that scored Ernie Clement from third, tying it 3–3 and forcing Seattle to relive a sequence that should’ve been over.

And no, this wasn’t a one-team grievance. The strike zone was tight to the point of parody from pitch one. In the very first at-bat, Trey Yesavage snapped a slider that lived in the day-one teaching box, called a ball.

In October, that’s the difference between your starter finishing the fifth and your middle reliever facing the heart of the order. It wasn’t the only factor, but it helped limit Gilbert to three innings.

Gilbert will wear part of this, he’d tell you he still has to get the next guy, and there were a couple of self-inflicted misses. But there’s a meaningful gap between “execute better” and “execute perfectly or the context flips against you.” Seattle’s starter did the former, repeatedly. The latter is a standard no pitcher can reliably meet when the edges disappear. With Raleigh framing like a tutorial and the plan working as drawn, two strikes somehow didn’t mean what two strikes are supposed to mean.

That’s the rub with MLB’s ABS limbo. The league has had the tools to fix the most consequential misses without erasing the human element, and yet here we are in October 2025 still navigating zones that change by inning and, at times, by reputation, waiting for 2026 to make it standard.