The Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system is being tested in just over half of the scheduled Grapefruit and Cactus League games this spring. So far, the system has been used sparingly but has successfully overturned balls and strikes that the home plate umpire might have called incorrectly.
The first example was Cubs pitcher Cody Poteet challenging a ball that, after a relatively fast review, was overturned and called a strike.
As it continues to be rolled out experimentally, the ABS system is being merged with the preexisting challenge system. The one that even the most dedicated fans are still catching up with and figuring out.
As a reminder, the challenge system during the MLB regular season allocates two challenges per game for each team. If the challenge is successful, the team retains the challenge. If it isn’t, the team loses the challenge until, potentially, they run out of challenges for that game.
One would think that the challenge rule would be commonly accepted and universally understood, but it isn’t. Even managers can be caught at times, having to be reminded by bench coaches just how many challenges they might have remaining during the game.
One challenge might lead an umpiring crew to wait for up to a five to ten-minute period. The MLB video review office in New York could then effectively overturn a call based on irrefutable visible evidence. The next might be denied in an instant after a quick look.
The back-and-forth can become daunting, and it takes a village to properly keep track of how many challenges a team might have left towards the end of the game. Despite the delays and onfield congregations, the general consensus among players, coaches, managers, and even most umpires is that the replay system helps.
It does indeed add a degree of accountability to an otherwise subjective call and is probably better for the game. Most of us will recall the “almost” perfect game in which Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga received an admittedly botched call from umpire Jim Joyce. Galarraga received a perfect feed from legendary first baseman Miguel Cabrera to finish a perfect pitching effort, only to have Joyce mysteriously make the call as “safe.”
That particular play has been cited as one of the motivating stories that helped inform the decision to implement the replay system. However, the ABS is an entirely different beast. Not everyone is thrilled about fully implementing the ABS at the MLB level.
“I feel like there were probably about two pitches that I thought were strikes that were called balls. Given that, I do not like it,” – Yu Darvish
Here’s the thing: how much delay of the game are we, as fans, willing to tolerate? The art of pitching is about rhythm. The process of stopping an at-bat to have an ABS video review, as quick and efficient as it may claim to be, is counterintuitive to the purity of the game. Baseball is a game of traditions, perhaps more so than any other major sport.
Including more automation to replace a human element (umpires) is a slippery slope that will never end. Part of the game’s heritage involves the interaction between the player or the manager and the human umpire. This interaction becomes hostile quite often; however, that spontaneous drama adds to the game’s beauty.
The struggle and the imperfections that are intertwined to represent the game as a whole are supposed to include the “chirp,” that is, the name-calling, the hollering, the dust-kicking….all of it. It’s just plain awesome. Who can forget the clashes between Hall of Fame Orioles Manager Earl Weaver and the umpiring crew on the receiving end of one of his tirades?
Without getting right up into an umpire’s face, the great Earl Weaver would have been just another coach. For all of the benefits that the ABS system might offer, it is not worth robbing us, as fans, of that juicy drama.
Baseball is a game of conventional wisdom and proud traditions. In recent decades, however, these have been replaced, to a large degree, by analytics and rule changes. The game isn’t what it used to be, but some things should remain the same. One such thing is the human element behind the dish.
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