{"id":649555,"date":"2026-03-29T00:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649555\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T00:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:30:15","slug":"yankees-take-advantage-of-obsessive-prep-for-new-abs-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649555\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees take advantage of ‘obsessive’ prep for new ABS system"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO —Aaron Judge<\/a> believes the New York Yankees<\/a> went a little bit overboard in their preparation for baseball’s new Automated Ball-Strike System.<\/p>\n

Manager Aaron Boone admits he is a little “anal” about it all.<\/p>\n

“We had too many meetings about it in my opinion,” said Judge, the two-time reigning AL MVP who grounded out in this first at-bat Saturday.<\/p>\n

Yet Judge’s timely, spot-on challenge during the sixth inning of a 3-0 victory Friday night against San Francisco certainly paid off. He homered for the first time this season five pitches later with a two-run, 405-foot drive to left field after an 0-for-7 start to 2026 that included going 0 for 5 with four strikeouts Wednesday –the first hitless opening day of his career.<\/p>\n

Paul Goldschmidt<\/a> scored on the play after a double to start the rally.<\/p>\n

Judge challenged what originally had been ruled strike two by plate umpire Chad Fairchild on an 86.1 mph slider from Robbie Ray<\/a> in the sixth inning and had it overturned to a ball by the so-called robot umpire.<\/p>\n

“I thought the call was going to stand so it was a close one there,” Judge said. “You get in a better count but I still have a job to do, especially with Goldy out there on second base to drive him in.”<\/p>\n

New York was 2 for 3 in challenge opportunities through the first two games of the series, while the Giants were 1 for 2. Then Jazz Chisholm Jr<\/a>.’s called third strike in the second against Tyler Mahle<\/a> was confirmed when he challenged.<\/p>\n

“I was kind of obsessive over it, so I wanted to talk about it a lot,” Boone said Saturday. “I was going up to individuals almost routinely after every one, ‘Hey, I really liked that one,’ why, ‘I hated that one.’ At the end of spring I pulled up probably eight to 10 examples not only our games but some other games and talked through them, just trying to get our guys to inherently understand instinctively, in-the-moment situations and also whenever we can, which is easier said than done, is stripping the emotion out of it, which is going to happen at some point.”<\/p>\n

New York’s Jose Caballero<\/a>lost the first challenge of the major league season during a season-opening 7-0 win over the Giants on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Boone believes the new system will be an asset for the Yankees, who had the second-lowest chase rate — or swings on pitches out of the zone — last year at 25.6% and just a fraction more than the Brewers, according to Sportradar.<\/p>\n

“That’s my expectation,” he said. “We’ve poured a lot into it. I feel like our team makeup should lend itself to this being a good thing for us and an advantage for us, but that’s not a given either. We’ve got to continue to evolve with it and learn from it and hopefully it is something that is a strength.”<\/p>\n

For Judge, this is an adjustment. He plans to pick his moments to tap his helmet and signal the 12 Hawk-Eye cameras to make the call.<\/p>\n

“Weird,” he said, “it’s part of the game, but you’ve got to get used to it. I’m a hitter, I’ve got to focus on hitting. I’m not going try to sit here and challenge every single one I think is close, but if there’s a big spot where I think I’ve got a chance to flip the count I’m going to do it. I’ve still got to go up there and do my job as a hitter.”<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO —Aaron Judge believes the New York Yankees went a little bit overboard in their preparation for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[83212,5,649,18092,4,1690,62,169,2548,2547,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-649555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-83212","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-espn","11":"tag-judge-aaron","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-yankees","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkyankees","18":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116309644136160704","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649555","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=649555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}