I was at spring training last week and got to witness live the experiment with the automated balls-and-strikes challenge system, and it was marvelous.

In a game against the Blue Jays, Yankees prospect Everson Pereira seemed to strike out on a 3-2 pitch to end a quiet 1-2-3 inning. But he hadn’t! In fact, he’d been screwed by flawed human umpiring. Instead of walking head down to the dugout, he challenged the call, and sure enough, the video of the location ball and the strike zone that flashed almost instantaneously on the scoreboard narrowly vindicated my man Pereira. He walked, and the Yankees scored three runs in a game they’d been trailing 4-0 (they eventually tied the game, but lost anyway).

Now, you can say that these bad calls even out during the course of the long regular season. But a three-run rally can easily determine who wins a game, and a game or two can matter a lot in a close playoff race.

That aside, the fact is that Pereira hadn’t really struck out, and it was an injustice to say that he had, especially when MLB has the means — happily deployed in this instance — to establish that he hadn’t.

Fans also enjoy the challenges, which build a little tension, before being resolved quickly.

The ABS challenges won’t be as transformative as the pitch clock, which has been an overwhelming success, but they should be deployed in real games as soon as possible — as a way station, of course, to fully automated balls-and-strikes calls.

I look forward to a future where every call made when Everson Pereira is batting is unassailably accurate.