Jen Pawol, the first female home plate umpire in MLB history, just got exposed by the robots

Jen Pawol made history as the first female home plate umpire in MLB history and on unfortunately, a video is going viral on social media for all the wrong reasons.

Jen Pawol watched from behind home as a pitch was delivered right down the heart of the plate. Middle of the zone. Could not be more of a strike if it tried. She called it a ball. The catcher challenged it. The ABS system overturned it immediately.

Unfortunately, this can’t happen, Jen Pawol

The first female home plate umpire in MLB history, Jen Pawol, made the worst call you’ll ever seen in a game…

After it was challenged by the catcher, the ABS system showed just how awful it was 😬 pic.twitter.com/uEOrrXBb5G

— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) March 20, 2026

Look, umpires miss calls. That is baseball and it always has been. Human beings are going to get it wrong sometimes and nobody expects perfection from anyone behind the plate.

Now that we got that part out of the way, there is missing a call and then there is missing a pitch that is sitting directly over the heart of the plate. That one falls into the second category and it does not matter who is wearing the chest protector. Unfortunately for trailblazer Jen Pawol, this blatant miss obviously falls in the second category.

This is also exactly why the automated ball-strike system exists and exactly why it is coming to MLB this season. The ABS challenge system was introduced because calls, maybe not as horrible as this one, were happening too often and the game was suffering for it. The Dominican Republic-Team USA semifinal at the WBC just had a controversial final pitch that cost one team a shot at the championship.

The league cannot afford to have the integrity of the game undermined by calls that any person with a basic understanding of the strike zone would get right.

Here’s how we should fix the problem, starting with Jen Pawol

Yup. I know what you’re thinking. You thought I was going to write that Jen Pawol is the reason why women shouldn’t be umpires in Major League Baseball. That’s says a lot about you, not me, but I’ll forgive you this time around. I just hope you’ll grant me the same sympathy when I inevitably write about something you disagree with.

The true fix is having ever umpire in MLB should have their accuracy rate tracked against the ABS system in real time. If you cannot maintain a certain threshold of correct calls then you get pulled and in baseball terms, designated for assignment until you can demonstrate the ability to stay above that number.

That is the only way to preserve human umpires in the long run because the alternative is removing them entirely. Clearly, that process has already started so if anything, I’m saving their jobs.

It is unfortunate that Jen Pawol was the one behind the plate on this one because the story should not be about who missed the call. It should be about the fact that the call was missed at all. This goes for every umpire in the game regardless of anything else.

You cannot have pitches right over the heart of the plate called balls on a major league baseball field. The robot will not let you forget it and neither will the internet.

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