MLB season preview: Robot umpires, Dodgers try for 3 in row, Rays return to Trop as lockout looms

NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball is changing at a dizzying speed in 2026 with the arrival of robot umpires, the return home of the Tampa Bay Rays and an alphabet soup of networks televising games in perhaps the last season before a labor shutdown. Much has transpired in the 4 1/2 months since the Los Angeles Dodgers rallied in World Series Game 7 to beat Toronto in 11 innings and become the first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees. There was the usual free agent musical chairs that saw Kyle Tucker wind up with the Dodgers, Bo Bichette with the New York Mets, Alex Bregman with the Chicago Cubs and Pete Alonso with the Baltimore Orioles. Venezuela became a first-time champion of a World Baseball Classic with record attendance and television viewers. But looming above the usual excitement for opening day on Wednesday is the possibility of no games in a year. Tony Clark was forced to resign as players' association head and replaced by Bruce Meyer as talk intensified about a possible management salary cap proposal the players' association vows to fight. Major League Baseball is likely to lock out players on Dec. 2, leaving 2027 in limbo. Cy Young Award winners Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are on the eight-man executive subcommittee that directs collective bargaining. "We need people that are invested and kind of have status among players and within the game to go into the negotiations and be comfortable going toe to toe with the owners," Skenes said. "It's not something that I sought out. Some guys nominated me for the position and that's not something you say no to." Send in the robots Following testing that started in the minor leagues in 2019, MLB decided last September to use the Automated Ball-Strike System in the regular season. While human umps call every pitch, each team has the ability to challenge two calls per game, retaining the challenge if successful, and has the possibility of at least one more in each extra inning. "You want get the egregiously wrong calls fixed and you want make sure you get it right in a big spot," three-time Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander said. ABS won't be used for a two-game series between Arizona and San Diego in Mexico City on April 25-26, for the Philadelphia-Minnesota game at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, on Aug. 13 or the Atlanta-Milwaukee matchup in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 23. Finding where a game is televised is more complicated than ever. Regular-season national broadcasts are split among Fox/FS1, TBS, ESPN, NBC/Peacock, AppleTV and Netflix. NBC's networks take over the Wild Card Series from ABC/ESPN. In addition, MLB will produce and distribute the local telecasts of 14 teams following the financial problems of Main Street Sports Group, which operates the regional FanDuel Sports Network stations. When the New York Yankees play the MLB season opener at the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, the game will be exclusively on Netflix. Dodgers go for three-peat After becoming the first team to win consecutive championships since the 1998-2000 Yankees, the Dodgers try to become just the fifth group to win three in a row, joining those Yankees, five by the 1949-53 Yankees, four by the 1936-39 Yankees and three by the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics. "When you're a Dodger, people want to take us down. They want to beat us," manager Dave Roberts told players in his spring training speech. "It's a Game 7. So I think that we've got to look ahead and say that this is going to be harder than it's ever been and we got to work even harder. And so my ask as a team, as an organization is to push ourselves even more. We already got the talent. There isn't any more talent in a major league clubhouse than in this room." Coming off his fourth unanimous MVP award, Shohei Ohtani is expected to be a two-way player over a full season. He returned to the mound last June 16 following his second major elbow surgery on Sept. 19, 2023. Back at the Trop Tampa Bay returns to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg after a season playing home games across the bay at Steinbrenner Field, the spring training home of the Yankees. Damage to the Trop caused by Hurricane Milton in October 2024 has been repaired. The Rays were 41-40 at Steinbrenner last year, their lowest home winning percentage since 2016. They drew 786,750 for an average of 9,713, selling out 61 games. "There is genuine, authentic excitement to get back to the Trop," manager Kevin Cash said. "We've played well in the Trop. We've had a lot of success in the Trop. And I think we're going back to something that's probably going to be a little bit newer, a little better than maybe as we left it because they had to do so many repairs." Milestone watch Four players could reach 400 career home runs this year. Manny Machado starts the season at 369, followed by Freddie Freeman at 368, Aaron Judge at 367 and Bryce Harper at 363.