Chris Bassitt did not hold back Wednesday after a disputed foul ball call helped doom the Baltimore Orioles in a 5-3 loss to the New York Yankees, accusing Major League Baseball of being too cheap to install the technology needed to get such calls right. The controversy centered on a Pete Alonso fly ball down the left-field line in the bottom of the seventh inning that was ruled foul, a call that stood after video review and left Baltimore's dugout fuming.
Alonso, who launched a home run in the third inning and finished the night 29 home runs and 82 RBIs into a season in which he is batting .267/.359/.498, struck out on the very next pitch after the disputed ruling. According to the New York Post, Bassitt, a member of the MLBPA executive subcommittee and a former Met himself, said MLB still has an issue with determining whether balls are fair or foul, and that technology could easily settle the question if the league were willing to pay for it. Bassitt said the lack of definitive fair-or-foul technology is crazy, and argued MLB simply does not have it in place because it would cost money.
A Single Camera Angle Wasn't Enough
The technical obstacle behind the non-call traces back to MLB's own replay standards. As reported by the Associated Press, Alonso said replay officials indicated two camera angles are required to confirm an overturn, but only a single camera down the left-field line captured the ball's trajectory relative to the pole. Overturning any on-field call under MLB rules requires clear and convincing visual evidence, and that single angle was not enough for the Replay Operations Center to reverse the foul ruling.
Orioles manager Craig Albernaz added that dugout iPads showed real-time ball-tracking data indicating Alonso's ball was actually fair, per the same AP report. That detail exposed a policy gap: teams have access to AI-driven tracking metrics on their tablets during games, but those numbers are barred from being used as evidence in official replay reviews. A social media user posting as Jarv shared an angle from the Baltimore broadcast showing the disputed call, while the account Fireside Yankees reported that the ball was ruled foul after further review.
Alonso Pitches Lasers and Pylon Cameras
Alonso did not stop at criticizing the process. He proposed that MLB install vertical lasers or goal-line style pylon cameras shooting straight up along the foul poles, arguing that fly balls passing high above the poles create an unnecessary blind spot for both umpires and camera crews, according to the AP report. The irony, as the news organization also noted, is that MLB has had the hardware to solve this since 2020, when it fully rolled out Sony's Hawk-Eye optical tracking system across all 30 ballparks for pitch tracking and Statcast metrics. That high-frame-rate camera array is not currently integrated into the league's Replay Operations Center for automated fair-or-foul determinations, according to Close Call Sports.
MLB has shown some appetite for automated officiating elsewhere. The league expanded spring training testing of Hawk-Eye-powered Automated Ball-Strike challenge systems to 13 venues in 2025, but per Diario AS, that automation has been restricted strictly to balls and strikes rather than foul lines or home run boundaries. The tension is not new, either — instant replay itself was introduced in August 2008 specifically to address controversial home run boundary calls, including fair-versus-foul disputes, before expanding to manager challenges in 2014, according to research published by SABR.
High Stakes for a Struggling Orioles Club
The loss dropped Baltimore to four games below .500 and 1.5 games behind the Minnesota Twins for the final American League Wild Card spot with 36 regular-season games remaining, a margin that makes every disputed call feel consequential. The Yankees scored two runs in the eighth inning to seal the win. Bassitt himself took a no-decision, pitching 5 2/3 innings while allowing three runs on eight hits and a walk, striking out six in his 14th appearance and 12th start of the season, a campaign in which he carries a 5.08 ERA.
Bassitt joined Baltimore in February on a one-year, $18.5 million contract that included a $3 million signing bonus and a $500,000 incentive tied to reaching 27 starts, a mark he had hit in five straight seasons before this one. He and Alonso were teammates on the 101-win 2022 New York Mets, where Bassitt made 30 starts and won 15 games, a relationship Hoodline detailed when it covered the Orioles' trade deadline tightrope last month. Alonso signed his own five-year, $155 million deal with Baltimore in December, part of an offseason overhaul Hoodline chronicled in its report on the club's re-signing of pitcher Zach Eflin.
For now, MLB has no technology in place to definitively determine whether a home-run ball is fair or foul, leaving Bassitt's complaint — and Alonso's proposed fix — squarely on the table as the Orioles fight to keep their playoff hopes alive.
.jpg){kind=link}