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Teams favored on 52.2% of ball/strike challenges during robot umpire test

NEW YORK (AP) — Teams won 52.2% of their ball/strike challenges during the spring training test of robot umpires, and catchers had a markedly better success rate than pitchers. Major League Baseball said Wednesday that 617 of 1,182 challenges were successful in the 288 exhibition games using the Automated Ball-Strike System. Batters won exactly 50% of their 596 challenges and the defense 54%, with catchers successful 56% of the time and pitchers 41%. Teams challenged 2.6% of called pitches; offense asked for computer reviews of 4.4% and the defense 1.8%. ABS was installed at 13 ...

Back to the NBA All-Star drawing board

NEW YORK (AP) — The NBA will not bring back its All-Star Game mini-tournament next season. Commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday that the format used last month — a four-team tournament made up of 24 NBA All-Stars and another team of rookies and sophomores that played their way in by winning the Rising Stars event on All-Star Friday, all the All-Star matchups playing untimed games to a target score of 40 points — “was a miss.” “We’re not there in terms of creating an ... experience that we can be proud of and our players can be proud of,” Silver said. The game is ...

Don’t write off possibility of Cinderellas in the future

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Nearly every year there’s at least one lovable underdog that rises from obscurity in the NCAA Tournament to capture the hearts of basketball fans and bust their brackets. Not this year. All 16 regional semifinalists are from power conferences for the first time since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The popular theory is that the transfer portal has led to a concentration of the best players at the big schools paying the most NIL money and, soon, the most through revenue sharing. Is this year just an anomaly? Purdue coach Matt Painter, whose 2023 team ...

Top pick for NFL draft remains anyone’s guess

NEW YORK (AP) — The NFL draft is less than a month away and there’s still some uncertainty over who will be the top pick. Quarterbacks Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders figure to be among the first players selected in next month’s NFL draft, though there’s no current consensus that either player — or any quarterback — will go No. 1 overall. Ward tried to solidify his status as the top pick recently, working out for all 32 NFL teams at Miami’s on-campus pro day. That includes the Tennessee Titans, who have the No. 1 overall selection. “They finally got to see me throw in ...

Measles outbreak expected to last for months

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — As measles cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount. But there’s a silver lining, officials say: More people have received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination this year in Texas and New Mexico, which also has an outbreak, compared to last year — even if it’s not as high as they would like. And pharmacies across the U.S., especially in Texas, are seeing ...