If you’re one of those people for whom baseball simply does not exist between the last out of the World Series and the first pitch of Opening Day, there’s a lot to catch up on. Kyle Tucker plays for the Dodgers now. So does Edwin Díaz. Actually, just assume everyone plays for the Dodgers until proven otherwise. But there’s also a new twist to the game this year, and it’s a three-letter abbreviation you’ll be hearing a lot on TV broadcasts this week: ABS.
It’s short for the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System. In other words: #RobotUmpsNow is … actually now.
So how will it work? If you’ve been following along all winter (or watched any spring training games on TV), you probably have a pretty good handle on it. If not — or if you’re a fan of questions such as “What are the secondary consequences of this decision?” — here’s your explainer, featuring a lot of links if you want to dig in further.
How does it work?
All strike zones are not created equal. The most obvious and common example is that not every strike to Aaron Judge (listed at 6-7) will be a strike to Jose Altuve (listed at 5-6). So every player has been officially measured by the league, and the strike zone that was once enforced under the rule of “the umpire said so” now has quantifiable numbers: 27 percent of a player’s height is the bottom of the zone, and 53.5 percent is the top of the zone. The width is the same ol’ 17 inches we’ve known forever.
It’s also two-dimensional now. After concerns that pitchers would learn to take advantage of a three-dimensional zone by throwing a sweeper that clipped the front of the plate, then dipped into the abyss of the opposite batter’s box, the league has deemed the very middle of the plate — 8.5 inches from the front and 8.5 inches from the back — to be the plane of ABS measurement.
But the robots won’t make every ball-strike call. In fact, they won’t make many of them at all. Umpires will still call every pitch. But if a pitcher, catcher or hitter (and only one of those three; challenges cannot come from the dugout or anywhere else) thinks the umpire got it wrong, he can tap the top of his head, and it goes to an ABS challenge.
Challenges take about three seconds, the call is either confirmed or overturned, and the game goes on. (The first challenge in MLB history ended up being upheld during Wednesday night’s game between the Yankees and Giants.) Each team gets two challenges, but they only burn one if they get a challenge wrong. So if an ump is having a particularly bad day, we could see a handful of calls overturned on either side.
OK, so what are the catches?
(Pun noted but unintentional.)
So we’re getting wrong calls right? Sounds too good to be true; are there unintended consequences? Of course. It’s baseball. No sooner has a new rule been announced than someone in every clubhouse has an idea on how to turn it into a competitive advantage that might need to be addressed with a future clarification from the league.
Here are a few possibilities:
• Before this year, catchers established a lot of value through framing: catching a ball in such a way that it looked to the umpire like a strike. That hasn’t entirely gone away, but there might be a new twist: what about catching a strike in a way that makes it look like a ball? The advantage? Tricking a batter into burning a challenge.
• The high strike might come back into vogue. With pitchers throwing harder than ever, and finding new ways to improve spin rate (see: “rise”), this could lead to a slight regression in the league’s war against one true outcome — strikeouts — outpacing the other two (walks, home runs). Here are the pitchers who could benefit the most.
• Or maybe it’s the opposite? As one pitcher was quoted in Jayson Stark’s in-depth explainer: “The top of the zone has been eliminated.” Which is it? We’ll see!
• Will we see in-dugout disagreements if a player loses a challenge early in the game? Maybe. Most teams have spent the spring observing who gets their challenges right — and who doesn’t.
• Up to you whether you see it as a feature or a bug, but it seems like manager ejections should be more infrequent this year. Before this year, the only recourse a manager had when he disagreed with a call was to voice his displeasure in a variety of colorful and aggressive ways. Now? Since challenges aren’t allowed to come from the dugout, it seems beneficial for a manager to at least wait to see if his player is going to challenge first. But something tells me that managers will still find a way to get an early shower from time to time.
• And then — while it’s probably nice to be able to take back a bad call — umpires are going to be under even more scrutiny. They should also get some more credit when we see how many challenges aren’t overturned, but it still will be an adjustment. Now if Bill Miller can just figure out the “off” switch on his mic (please never figure out the “off switch” on your mic, Bill).
• And lastly, while it’s good to be able to overturn the egregious calls, it’s important to note: there’s a margin of error, even for ABS. And for a system that can overturn a call on a pitch it measures as .1 inches outside the zone, that’s not an unimportant detail — the margin of error can be as high as .4 inches. Stark has more below on the implications.
Perfect? Not hardly, or at least not yet. But if it means we never see this kind of at-bat again, it has to be worth it, right?
