MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — American defender Chris Richards has recovered from a knee injury and says he can play in the United States' friendly against Portugal on Tuesday but midfielder Johnny Cardoso is hurt and will leave camp ahead of the game.

Richards, the top American central defender, missed Saturday's 5-2 loss to Belgium.

Richards sustained a slight injury during Crystal Palace’s Europa Conference League match at Larnaca on March 19.

“I’m fine,” he said Monday. “I had a bad tackle in my last game with Palace and so just a little bit of knee pain, knee soreness, but I’ve been training individually all week and I’m available for tomorrow.”

Cardoso started against Belgium and was replaced by Cristian Roldan for the start of the second half. Cardoso was to return Monday night to Atletico Madrid.

“Johnny arrived from Madrid with some small things, issues,” U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said. “The plan was to play 45 minutes, but when finished after 45 minutes he feel again this type of uncomfortable things in some part of his leg.

“I think he was good during 45 minutes.” Pochettino said. “I am happy with his performance, commitment and intention to play.”

Christian Pulisic goal drought

Pochettino said he may tinker with the positioning of Christian Pulisic, who usually is on a wing with the national team. Pulisic is scoreless in his last 12 games with AC Milan and his last seven for the U.S. dating to November 2024.

“Maybe we help a little bit to go a little bit more closer to the goal,” Pochettino said. “Maybe we can do some tests also to play with maybe more midfielder and less offensive player.”

Pochettino said he never felt comfortable during Saturday's loss to Belgium. Weston McKennie put the U.S. ahead in the 39th minute and the Americans allowed five straight goals.

On the 5-2 loss to Belgium

“You saw my face when we scored,” Pochettino said, drawing his lips and trying to show no emotion. “My gut feeling, it wasn’t good. You say why? Because when we scored, we should be the third goal, not the first goal.”

Comparing lack of aggression to dieting and then bingeing

Pochettino said maintaining aggressiveness is the same as dietary control following weight loss.

“After you need to have discipline, no? No big intention to eat the nice food and everything like this,” he said. “I won but then it’s nice, no, the chicken, the steak, the lasagna, the pasta?”

Chris, Christian, Cristian on one team can be confusing

Pochettino laughed about having to learn which name or nickname to use referring to each player.

“I have Christian Pulisic, Cristian Roldan, Chris is Richards and sometimes now they make me to change: Cristian Rolan is Roldy, Roldan, and Antonee Robinson is Jedi,” he said. “I am learning how to call after nearly after two years these guys.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Richie Garcia is worried about the impact that robot umpires will have on their human counterparts.

Major League Baseball introduced the Automated Ball-Strike System for regular-season play this season starting with the New York Yankees' opener at San Francisco on Wednesday night, giving teams a chance to appeal strike zone decisions to a system based on 12 Hawk-Eye cameras.

“I think it’s embarrassing, embarrassing to the umpires that are calling the game. Nobody likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000, 40,000 people,” said Garcia, a major league umpire from 1975-99. “What Major League Baseball is saying is: I don’t trust the umpire’s strike zone, so I’m going to use something that’s going to be operated by some computer geek that knows nothing about baseball, and he’s the one that’s going to measure this and measure that because he’s got a Ph.D. in physics or whatever the hell he’s got a degree in.”

Garcia drew criticism for not calling a strike on a 2-2 pitch from San Diego's Mark Langston to the Yankees' Tino Martinez in the 1998 World Series opener, and Martinez hit a tiebreaking grand slam on the next offering that sparked New York to a four-game sweep.

Umpires keep improving

While there is constant debate over calls, umpires were overall their most accurate ever last year. Just not as perfect as technology.

There were 368,898 regular-season pitches called by big league umps last season, an average of 152 per game. The 92.83% accuracy rate was the highest — an average of 10.88 missed calls per game, according to MLB. That is down from an average of 16.58 missed calls per game in 2016, when the accuracy rate was 89.31%.

“I’m 60 and it seems to me like the younger generation really wants this technology and they want the certainty of a pitch being a ball or a strike," said Ted Barrett, a big league ump from 1994 to 2022.

Under ABS, each team gets two challenges per game and keeps a challenge if successful. A team out of challenges gets one additional in each extra inning.

“As an umpire, you never want to miss anything. You want to be absolutely 100% correct, but we’re all human and that’s just not possible,” said Sam Holbrook, an MLB umpire from 1996 to 2022. “Social media and the media have really been hammering the umpires for pitches that are just minutely off the zone or in the zone or whatever, and it’s just too hard to be perfect with all of this. I think it’s going to be good to correct any egregious pitches. I think it’s going to show how good the umpires actually are.”

A quarter-century of electronic evaluation

MLB installed an Umpire Information System developed by Questec at some ballparks in 2001 and upgraded to a league-wide Zone Evaluation in 2009 as part the PITCHf/x system. TrackMan's doppler radar system took over in 2017 as part of MLB Statcast.

Since 2009, umpires have received a Z-E evaluation for every game they work behind the plate. Since 2014, they also have experienced getting overturned by expanded video review.

“It's tough mentally on an umpire because you failed at your job and there’s that instant feedback of failure,” Barrett said. “Nobody wants to fail at your job, but then there’s also the, hey, thank God I didn’t cost that team a game or a run or a pennant. No one wants to live with that. And so we take the positive of that. The negative is sometimes it’s like: What am I doing over there? I got overturned twice at first base."

Under ABS, a strike is defined as when the ball crosses over the plate at the midpoint of the plate in a box 53.5% of the batter’s height at the top and 27% at the bottom. That is different from the rule book strike zone of a cube whose top is the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants and whose bottom is at the hollow beneath the kneecap.

“They’re going to change to what the ABS calls, whether it’s a challenge or not because, remember, they are getting evaluated on their performance based on that ABS,” Barrett said.

Spring training test results from 2026

Philadelphia had the best spring training challenge success rate among teams at the plate with 61%, followed by the Chicago Cubs (60%), Boston and Seattle (54% each), while Texas and Arizona (33% each) and Kansas City (34%) were at the bottom.

St. Louis (75%), Cincinnati (71%) and Cleveland (70%) topped challenge success by fielding teams, while the Los Angeles Dodgers (43%) and Baltimore (45%) lagged.

Batters won 46% of 887 challenges and defense 60% of 1,020. The Yankees won the most challenges overall with 54, and Arizona, the Dodgers and the New York Mets tied for the fewest wins with 20.

Boston's Willson Contreras had the most batter challenges and was successful on six of seven. Philadelphia's Christian Cairo had the most challenges among batters with a 100% success rate at four.

Among catchers, Pedro Pagés of St. Louis was 8 for 8, Cincinnati's P.J. Higgins 7 for 7 and Milwaukee's Jeferson Quero 6 for 6.

Edgar Quero of the Chicago White Sox was 2 for 11, Payton Henry of the New York Yankees 1 for 9 and Austin Wynns of the Athletics 0 for 7.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB