Adam Ottavino is taking aim at the Mets again, and this time the issue is their reported use of A.I. earlier this year.
Ottavino, who spent three seasons with New York, said the club wasn’t just using the technology - it was talking about it too openly. That’s the part that has turned this from a baseball edge into an awkward look for the organization, especially with MLB moving to crack down on the practice.
The Athletic reported that numerous teams had been using A.I., and the Mets were among them. The bigger issue, at least from Ottavino’s perspective, is that the team was bragging about it.
Using A.I. itself was not the problem here. In a sport that has spent decades chasing any possible advantage, that part feels like the natural next step.
Baseball has already gone from old-school numbers to a game increasingly shaped by data, devices, and predictive tools. If teams are already carrying iPads in the dugout, the line between information and overkill gets blurry fast.
The source of the backlash is less about the technology and more about the optics. Gamesmanship has limits, and the article draws a clear distinction between something like a fan using binoculars or a buzzer relaying pitches and a team using A.I. to help with pitch selection. The latter is framed more as lazy than illegal, at least in the way it was being used before MLB stepped in.
There’s also the bigger reality that the Mets don’t have much to boast about right now. The article notes that only the Colorado Rockies have a worse record than New York this year, which makes any bragging about a competitive edge sound even worse.
The piece also points out that the Mets were not alone. Other teams were using A.I. to some degree, and at least a third had expanded apps on their team iPads for similar purposes. In that sense, this wasn’t a one-team scandal so much as another example of baseball pushing into gray territory before the league moved to shut it down.
For Ottavino, though, the message is simple: if you’re going to use it, don’t go around advertising it. MLB has already acted quickly enough to keep the issue from growing into something bigger, and the Mets are left with the kind of attention no club wants - not for being clever, but for being loud about it.
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