{"id":613753,"date":"2026-03-08T19:52:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613753\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T19:52:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:52:22","slug":"the-giants-abs-challenge-system-more-giants-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613753\/","title":{"rendered":"The Giants + ABS Challenge System = more Giants wins"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s another season of change for Major League Baseball<\/a>. For the first time ever, hitters and catchers will have the chance to overturn called balls and strikes in official games. Are the days of ejections for arguing balls and strikes over? How do Major League Baseball fans feel about the game\u2019s evolution?<\/p>\n

Bryce Eldridge drew a walk in his first plate appearance of yesterday\u2019s 7-5 Cactus League win over the Texas Rangers thanks to the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System that will be in the major leagues this season. Home plate umpire Charlie Welling had called this pitch, some 1.9\u201d off the bottom of the zone, a strike:<\/p>\n

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Eldridge put his right hand to his batting helmet immediately, signaling for the challenge, which overturned the called strike. It was his second successful challenge in two tries this spring.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re one of those optimistic Giants fans, then you saw the team\u2019s top prospect flash strike zone awareness that could only fuel that perpetual optimism. He\u2019s got raw power, the well-timed inside out swing<\/a>, not embarrassing defense at first base, and a Brandon Beltesque awareness of the strike zone? And just 21 years old? Is he too good to be true?<\/p>\n

Of course, he challenged a called first strike pitch a couple of innings later and the call was upheld, giving him his first lost challenge of Spring Training, but that\u2019s insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The comedy of manners that has so often been required of hitters and catchers towards umpires falls away to a degree. Rather than indignant players showing up umps or emotionally fragile umpires feeling slighted by even the slightest slump of a shoulder or creak of a catcher\u2019s gear, everybody gets to turn their heads towards The Computer to temporarily outsource their frustrations. It\u2019s a chance for everybody to chill out and, at worst, get the call right.<\/p>\n

And the added benefit is that not only do hitters with excellent strike zone judgment now have the chance to right the wrongs of umpiring, the best catchers in the world get to show off how rarely their framing \u201csteals\u201d strikes.<\/p>\n

With catchers having the opportunity to challenge calls, Patrick Bailey\u2019s preternatural pitch framing ability might just be supercharged by technology. There were some fears that he\u2019d lose the whole stealing strikes ability, but getting to prove to the umpire that the strike he setup to catch was, indeed, a strike even if the umpire was flummoxed by his positioning or whatever makes the potential loss of a genuine \u201cstolen strike\u201d in a critical moment about a wash. As Andrew Baggarly reports<\/a>, \u201cBailey is confident his success rate [for using the ABS Challenge System] will be much higher than the 56 percent overturn rate for catchers who participated in testing last spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not difficult to imagine an early season scenario where an opposing team is in disbelief that Bailey has been able to catch certain pitches as strikes, be wrong enough to lose their challenges (both teams start with two challenges), and then be vulnerable to the late-game \u201cstolen strike\u201d as a result (though, teams out of challenges are refreshed with one new challenge in extra innings<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But what about you, MLB fans? This fundamentally changes the game. The sanctity of umpire (mis)judgment has been eroding for some time thanks to the disruption provided by technology, and that loss of the human element to what is a very human game is sure to ruffle some feathers of the stodgiest and hardiest of die hards. Are you looking forward to hitters and catchers having the chance to show up the umps or swing at bats \u2014 and games \u2014 in your team\u2019s favor with a simple challenge? SB Nation took an MLB Reacts poll to get a sense of the mood.<\/p>\n

\"SB<\/p>\n

SB Nation MLB Reacts poll that reads, \u201c82% of MLB fans like the new ABS Challenge System\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an overwhelming result, but it makes a lot of sense. Getting the call right is a widely held belief and in a game that can be as cruel as baseball, the ABS Challenge System might just be a sorely needed pain reliever.<\/p>\n

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On the other hand, as great as technology can be, the ABS Challenge System isn\u2019t flawless. It will change the aesthetics of the game in a way that longtime fans might not ever get used to in their (okay, our) lifetimes. And it\u2019s not like fan opinion gets it right every time. Most fans want a salary cap, for instance. But anyway, here\u2019s an example of this changed aesthetic:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll have a lot more games ended on challenged pitches, and it\u2019s unclear at the moment what side comes out ahead. Last March<\/a>, Baseball Prospectus looked at situations similar to the video embedded above, where walk-off walks might\u2019ve been overturned and changed to a called third strike. The fact remains that \u201cthe human element\u201d of the game does get lost as technology suffuses it, and it\u2019s not really a question of a tradeoff because, again, decision-making is being outsourced to a machine. We\u2019ll probably see fewer no hitters or perfect games and fewer wild swings with stellar results just as the humans paid to play and call the game conform their behaviors to the system established by ABS. What do we gain from that beyond \u201cgetting the call right\u201d? I think that\u2019s a philosophical question meant to be answered in an internet comment section.<\/p>\n

That said, the commentariat have spoken to an extent, and would seem to have a gut instinct that leads them in the opposite direction of the game-ending examples cited above:<\/p>\n

\"SB<\/p>\n

SB Nation MLB Reacts poll graphic: 71% of MLB fans think the ABS Challenge System will benefit hitters more than pitchers<\/p>\n

This makes a lot of sense. Fans think players get dinged for falsely called strikes a lot of the time. They\u2019re probably going to be surprised by how many times that\u2019s not the case and how often umpires miss strikes, but generally speaking, this is sound. It\u2019s always been two against one with a pitcher and catcher ganging up on the hitter and so ABS would seem to be a solution to that problem by making technology a hitter\u2019s partner.<\/p>\n

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But you can bet<\/a> the Giants are one of the few teams already in position to benefit from the rule change, not just because Bryce Eldridge has excellent strike zone judgment but because their lineup core of Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman, and (to a lesser extent) Willy Adames have a combined career OBP of .333 (the league average the past four seasons is around .315) and Patrick Bailey\u2019s catching ability is already the best in the world. Now he gets to enhance it with technology while leading a staff that doesn\u2019t need strikeouts to be effective, but will certainly be even better with more called strikes added to the mix.<\/p>\n

It has been said that the Giants\u2019 dynasty of the 2010s came to a quick and painful end once Statcast was installed in all 30 stadiums and it has felt like the franchise has been playing catchup with technology ever since. Their roster was never \u2014 and still mostly isn\u2019t \u2014 setup to take advantage of the recent changes that enhance stolen bases, either. The ABS Challenge System would seem to be the first new industry standard they\u2019re setup to gain from at the outset and that\u2019s a very exciting proposition, whether you\u2019re a diehard \u201chuman element\u201d fan or a fan who would pay to see androids play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s another season of change for Major League Baseball. For the first time ever, hitters and catchers will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[146,11659,5,710,33244,50,162,19,379,4,7661,863,378,66,4343,4340,33559,4344,4341,4342,151,69,103],"class_list":["post-613753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-giants","tag-arizona","tag-balls-and-strikes","tag-baseball","tag-bryce-eldridge","tag-challenge-system","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-giants","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-matt-chapman","tag-mlb","tag-patrick-bailey","tag-rafael-devers","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfranciscogiants","tag-scottsdale","tag-sf","tag-sf-giants","tag-sfgiants","tag-spring-training","tag-texas-rangers","tag-willy-adames"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116195306072208312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}