--- title: "Orioles blast MLB's replay tech after Alonso's near-homer is ruled foul" description: "Pete Alonso's deep drive down the left-field line was called foul and upheld on review in a 5-3 Orioles loss to the Yankees, and Baltimore's clubhouse wants to know why a league that tracks every pitch cannot tell fair from foul. 'Literally crazy in 2026,' said pitcher Chris Bassitt." category: "Sports" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/sports author: "Liam Fitzgerald" published: 2026-08-20T04:52:00.000Z updated: 2026-08-20T04:52:00.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/orioles-blast-mlb-s-replay-tech-after-alonso-s-near-homer-is-ruled-foul tags: ["mlb", "orioles", "yankees", "replay", "baseball"] --- # Orioles blast MLB's replay tech after Alonso's near-homer is ruled foul Pete Alonso's deep drive down the left-field line was called foul and upheld on review in a 5-3 Orioles loss to the Yankees, and Baltimore's clubhouse wants to know why a league that tracks every pitch cannot tell fair from foul. 'Literally crazy in 2026,' said pitcher Chris Bassitt. With the score tied 3-3 in the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, Baltimore slugger Pete Alonso launched a ball deep down the left-field line that half the park thought was a go-ahead home run. The umpires called it foul, the [replay center in New York upheld the call](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49666131/orioles-bash-mlb-technology-alonso-blast-ruled-foul), Alonso struck out on the next pitch, and the Yankees went on to win 5-3 after scoring twice in the eighth. What followed was one of the sharpest attacks on Major League Baseball's replay infrastructure in years, from a clubhouse that believes the technology to get the call right already exists, just not where the league needs it. ## 'It would cost money. That's it.' MLB's replay office explained the decision in a statement: ["After viewing all relevant angles, the Replay Official could not definitively determine that the ball left the playing field in fair territory. The call stands, and it is a foul ball."](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25476316-pete-alonso-home-run-ruled-foul-after-controversial-replay-vs-yankees-mlb-releases-statement) That explanation landed poorly in the visiting clubhouse. "In order to overturn a call, you need to have two camera angles to confirm it," Alonso said, noting that only the down-the-line camera showed the ball's position relative to the foul pole. He proposed a fix borrowed from another sport: "A simple fix is like football, you have the pylon camera with the plane, where it shoots right across the goal line." Pitcher Chris Bassitt was blunter. ["That we don't have the technology in place to actually say, 'Hey, this was fair or foul,' is literally crazy in 2026,"](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49666131/orioles-bash-mlb-technology-alonso-blast-ruled-foul) he said. "Because it would cost money. That's it. I mean, that's literally it." Manager Craig Albernaz pointed at the gap between the sport's tools and its rulings: "There are teams using AI on the iPads and other sports use ball-tracking data for challengeable calls. Don't understand why we don't do it." ## A league that tracks everything, except this The frustration has a particular sting in 2026, the season MLB [introduced its Automated Ball-Strike challenge system](https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/baseball/baseball-ushers-high-tech-replay-review-system-calling-balls-strikes-rcna263971), which uses Hawk-Eye cameras to let players challenge ball and strike calls and displays the verdict on the videoboard within seconds. The same Hawk-Eye system tracks every batted ball, and teams see that data on dugout iPads in near-real time. But fair-foul boundary calls remain governed by conventional video replay, which requires clear visual evidence from broadcast cameras to overturn what the umpire ruled on the field. The result is the inconsistency the Orioles spent Wednesday night litigating: a league that can adjudicate a pitch's position to the centimeter, relying on squinting at camera angles to place a 350-foot drive against a foul pole. ## Why it mattered The lost home run was not academic. Baltimore's defeat was its third in a row, [denting its position in the wild-card race](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49666131/orioles-bash-mlb-technology-alonso-blast-ruled-foul) with just over five weeks left in the regular season, and one swing of the bat might have changed the game's arc entirely. MLB has given no indication it plans to extend ball-tracking to boundary calls this season. But the ABS system itself spent years in the minors before players pushed it into the big leagues, and if Wednesday night showed anything, it is that the players are now pushing again. ## Sources - [Orioles bash MLB technology after Alonso's blast ruled foul](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49666131/orioles-bash-mlb-technology-alonso-blast-ruled-foul) - [Pete Alonso home run ruled foul after controversial replay vs. Yankees; MLB releases statement](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25476316-pete-alonso-home-run-ruled-foul-after-controversial-replay-vs-yankees-mlb-releases-statement) - [Baseball ushers in high-tech replay review system for calling balls and strikes](https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/baseball/baseball-ushers-high-tech-replay-review-system-calling-balls-strikes-rcna263971)