Comerica Park, Detroit (The ball-strike challenge system is a welcome improvement - Too bad they got it wrong)
With the ABS (Automatic Ball and Strike) challenge system going into place this year, Major League Baseball has taken a huge step forward to make sure that the outcomes of games are decided by the actions of the players, rather than the umpires. It’s too bad they did it wrong. The ABS challenge system The way the ABS challenge system works is that after every pitch where the umpire calls a ball or strike (i.e., every pitch on which the batter doesn’t swing), there is an opportunity for a challenge. But the challenge has to be made “immediately,” and can only be made by the batter, pitcher and catcher, by tapping their cap or helmet. In practice, I’ve seen few pitchers make challenges, so it’s really the batter or the catcher. If there’s a challenge, a graphic shows up on the scoreboard, which shows the trajectory of the ball, and then shows where it is in the strike zone. An example is here , or a set of stills from the process is shown below (the image above is re...
