Major League Baseball has quietly yanked a powerful digital toy out of managers’ hands, cutting off teams’ custom tab on league-issued iPads in dugouts after finding some clubs were using generative AI to spit out live suggestions on pitch selection, substitutions and other in-game decisions. The tweak kicked in at the start of the season’s second half, with teams given a runway to adjust after the league circulated a memo in mid-June.
League memo tells clubs to pull the plug on live AI
In a June 11 memo, MLB executive vice president of baseball operations Morgan Sword told general managers, assistant GMs and video staff that the custom tab, in many cases, "had expanded the use of the dugout iPads beyond their originally intended purpose" and was now being used to provide real-time recommendations on substitutions and pitch calling, according to The Associated Press. The memo said MLB made the custom tab inaccessible when the second half began so clubs that relied on it would have time to rework their workflows. A competition-committee review also found that, at the time of the audit, clubs were complying with existing device rules.
How common was AI in the dugout
This was not just a science-project on the margins. Industry reporting cites sources who say roughly a third of clubs had built or adopted custom apps and tools that blended game inputs with generative models to generate strategy suggestions, a trend first flagged in coverage that made the rounds among sports trade reporters and was later summarized by Sports Business Journal. That reporting says the midseason policy rollback is aimed squarely at live, model-driven calls, while still preserving pregame and other static scouting content on those same devices.
Front offices are not all thrilled
The new limits have irked some analytics and R&D staffers who see in-game tools as fertile ground for innovation, not something to be boxed in. At least one unnamed front-office official, clearly unimpressed, was quoted as saying, "Gotta stop the cheating before there's cheating now," a line relayed in coverage by technology and sports outlets including Engadget. League officials, for their part, appear to be walking a tightrope, limiting live decision support while still letting teams lean on preloaded reports and delayed video for preparation and review.
A short tech timeline
The iPad program itself is not some overnight experiment. MLB piloted tablets in dugouts in late 2015 and formally expanded the initiative in 2016 through a collaboration with Apple that delivered the MLB Dugout app and club-customizable reports to every team, according to MLB.com. Rules around in-game video have already been through cycles of tightening. Live video access was cut back in 2020 following the sign-stealing scandal, and MLB brought delayed in-game clips back the next season under stricter controls, a sequence also documented by MLB.com.
What it means on game day
On a practical level, teams can still upload static scouting packets and other non-live content to league devices. What is out of bounds now is anything that resembles real-time model outputs or on-the-spot decision prompts, which will be blocked and subject to league review, according to league and trade reporting. Clubs that had grown used to rapid model feedback from the dugout are expected to reroute those workflows back into video rooms, analytics offices or pregame prep sessions, while MLB keeps an eye on compliance through its device program.
