One week into the ABS challenge system, the Boston Red Sox have a clearly defined strategy.
“The most important thing is when (we challenge), we don’t want to be the team that challenges the most,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “We want to be the most efficient.”
The Cleveland Guardians have the complete opposite strategy.
“It’s more about how many we can get right than it is our percentage,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “Whether you’re 2-for-100 or 2-for-2, you got two challenges overturned. We want our guys to use them.”
At some point, the league might reach a consensus, but Major League Baseball’s first week with the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system has been a learning process that’s felt almost experimental. According to Tap to Challenge, a site that uses Statcast data to track ABS events, the Arizona Diamondbacks challenged only seven pitches in the first week while the Minnesota Twins challenged 26. The Guardians were 2-for-12 in their challenges, while the Orioles were 12-for-14.
The disparities are huge.
“It’s easy for all of you and everybody after the game to say, ‘What are we doing?’” Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell said, pounding the table for emphasis. “But the real time of this thing is a completely different animal for the players and for the umpires and for the catchers.”
In interviews with nearly two dozen Major League managers, coaches, players and executives, The Athletic found far more positive first impressions than negative, but those evaluations often came with caveats. The system has created more stress for catchers, added top-of-the-zone confusion for hitters and pitchers, and has brought intense and often uncomfortable scrutiny to umpires.
“It’s correct to have a chance to get it right,” Tampa Bay Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder said. “But I personally feel for the umpires under this current system. … Given today’s environment — velocity, huge break profiles on offspeed, extension deception, etc., and not having the benefit of knowing what pitch is coming — it’s pretty remarkable how accurate most of them are. It makes the game better, but the umpires are humans too.
“It must be difficult at the moment and in the moment for some of the most tenured umpires.”
Although every team spent time in spring training discussing ABS strategy, it’s still a work in progress in most dugouts. Some teams are being aggressive. Others are holding back. The San Diego Padres keep a challenge play sheet in the dugout — similar to a play sheet an NFL coach might use when deciding whether to go for 2 — that outlines situations in which to be most or least aggressive in challenging borderline pitches.
“Yes, we have it color-coded, elementary style,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said.
The Padres have been almost perfectly middle-of-the-pack in number of challenges and percentage of overturned calls. The Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers and Pittsburgh Pirates have been among the least aggressive, and the Twins have been by far the most aggressive, and their manager, Derek Shelton, said he’s still talking to players who are hesitant, hoping to make them more comfortable tapping their helmets in search of a better call.
“I think the best teacher is consequences,” Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said. “So, if you get it wrong, it’s like, ‘OK, well I don’t want to feel stupid because I challenged this pitch.’ No, you remember that this pitch is a strike.”
Everyone is recalibrating what makes a strike — and how to get one — something the Houston Astros wrestled with as they walked a franchise-record 28 batters in their opening series against the Los Angeles Angels.
“Seems the umpires have started calling a little bit of a tighter zone,” Astros pitching coach Josh Miller said. “Putting the onus on the catcher or the pitcher to challenge if they really feel like it’s a strike.”
Miller said the Angels were far more patient than the Astros expected, and he’s wondering if that swing behavior will become a new norm under the ABS system, especially given the floating nature of the strike zone, which moves up and down — and grows taller and shorter — depending on the height of each batter.
“I think guys that are tall, even catchers, are having trouble determining what is the top,” Shelton said. “Where does it go? The challenge for umpires is going to be ‘How high does it go now’ compared to previous places?”
Triple A had the ABS challenge system last year, and Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia said he noticed during a September rehab assignment that those hitters had a better sense of the top of the zone than even big league hitters. When Kwan asked Triple A catchers for ABS advice this spring, they repeatedly told him: “If the ball feels at all up, you should challenge it, because it’s probably a ball.”
The floating strike zone eventually could create an advantage for batters as they get familiar with their specialized dimensions.
“A hitter having to understand one strike zone versus a pitcher having to estimate a ton of strike zones is difficult for the pitcher,” Dodgers reliever Jack Dreyer said.
The system has sparked significant fan reactions whenever a call is challenged. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
Another thing coaches and players are monitoring: pitch selection.
“The fact that the two-seamer right now is probably the pitch that’s been missed the most is interesting,” Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla said. “But at the same time, it’s the pitch that moves the latest into the zone or out of the zone, so that makes sense to me.”
If there’s an early uniformity to the ABS challenge system, it’s the focus on each team’s catcher as the ultimate judge of balls and strikes, when to challenge and when to play it safe. Hitters take only a handful of at-bats each game, but catchers call 100-plus pitches against hitters of all shapes and sizes.
“It creates a little more stress on my nights,” Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “I’m constantly second-guessing, having to think about every single pitch that we go through. But overall, I like it for the game.”
That basic sentiment — that getting calls right is good, but that adjustments are difficult — was a running theme in our conversations about first impressions.
“I think there’s a very psychological aspect to this that’s not great for players or umpires,” Counsell said.
The ABS system has reminded New York Yankees center fielder Trent Grisham of a conversation from years ago when a teammate told him the box on TV — the strike zone shown on every broadcast — had ruined baseball.
“I thought it was more of an overstatement than anything at the time,” Grisham said. “The older I’ve gotten, and the later in my career, I think I 100 percent agree with that. There’s too many opinions, at the end of the day. And that’s kind of how the game was played for 120 years. We went 120 years without a box on TV that opens everything up for interpretation.”
In theory, the ABS system maximizes interpretation in the moment — ball or strike, challenge or not — while eliminating second-guessing in the end.
“That seems like the whole point of the system,” Rangers assistant pitching coach Dave Bush said. “Not to get every single borderline call right all game, but to have a way for high-leverage, impactful pitches to be called correctly.”
In that sense, the challenge system has done its job in its first week. Calls have been corrected, games have been affected, and new strategies have been put into play. There’s more to do and more to come, but when all’s said and done, there’s less to complain about. Especially in the dugout.
“My whole career there was a lot of screaming and complaining about the calls we didn’t agree with,” Cora said. “When you have the challenges, it’s very quiet.”
With reports from The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, Dan Hayes, Brendan Kuty, Zack Meisel, Jen McCaffrey, Patrick Mooney, Dennis Lin, and Chandler Rome
