behike
Well-Known Member
If you haven't watched a ballgame yet this season, you really should. This new system has really changed the game. I was talking about this with @drunkfish tonight on the vHerf, but was fuzzy on the details I had heard in passing, so I decided to see if I could find recordings and articles about this to refresh my memory
I’m sure everyone knows there is a new instant replay for calling strikes and balls. But for those who don’t know how it works, every team receives two challenges for the first 9 innings, but if they are successful, teams can reuse those challenges. If you are out of challenges, you will be given one more at the start of the 10th inning.
Here are my gripes, which are not my opinions. They are based on media reports from ESPN, NESN (the Red Sox local sports network), and a discussion among reporters on local radio (98.5 Sports Hub).
Below are most of the sources I used in my rant.
I’m sure everyone knows there is a new instant replay for calling strikes and balls. But for those who don’t know how it works, every team receives two challenges for the first 9 innings, but if they are successful, teams can reuse those challenges. If you are out of challenges, you will be given one more at the start of the 10th inning.
Here are my gripes, which are not my opinions. They are based on media reports from ESPN, NESN (the Red Sox local sports network), and a discussion among reporters on local radio (98.5 Sports Hub).
- Opening Day games were 8 minutes longer on average than last year’s average. This excludes all the pre-game fanfare etc., and with the pitch clocks being in effect it is hard to argue much else could be driving this.
- There are way more than 4 challenges per game because of retention if successful, and it is extremely annoying to see strike 3 called for your pitcher only to have everyone turn around and go back to the field because of a challenge. I mean its great if your team gets a call and you get to keep batting, but just wait when your on the other side of it and you will see what I mean
- The pitcher, catcher or batter can initiate a challenge within two seconds of a pitch being caught.
- Because of the velocity and movement of the ball etc., per the NESN broadcast team, if a player initiates a challenge that says the ball was within (inside or outside) two inches of the strike zone edge it was a fair idea for them to challenge the call, but if over two inches it was a silly decision. For those wanting better context as to what that means, a MLB baseball’s diameter is 2.86" – 2.94". To me, on its face 2” sounds like a lot, but it is less than a baseball in diameter, so perhaps not.
- Players were measured in the morning at a specific time during spring training. They were measured based on height alone, and it ignores anatomy (i.e., long upper torso vs long legs). And there stance should matter. This is all per the official MLB Rules pasted below.
- The official strike zone is the area over home plate from the midpoint between a batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants -- when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball -- and a point just below the kneecap. In order to get a strike call, part of the ball must cross over part of home plate while in the aforementioned area.
- The system ignores this. It designs a strike zone based on their height alone. Why does this matter, well besides the anatomical differences between people with similar heights. There are two other things that are supposed to matter.
- Why measure people in the AM, per ESPN via MLB, studies have shown people lose height throughout the day. So they are potentially increasing the size of the zone when player play at night, granted it can’t be by much given that we don’t shrink an inch over the course of the day.
- But more importantly, your stance matters for the size of the zone. Players that bat quite upright such as Cody Bellinger are likely benefiting from this as their zone has likely shrunk because of the algorithm averaging the size of the zone out for all players of the same height. And players who have a much more compact stance, hall of famer Jeff Bagwell for the Astros comes to mind (his stance almost looked like he was sitting on a low stool, would likely now have a larger zone than usual.
- And on top of this, this makes the zone sizing unfair to the umpire as it is no longer an apple to apple comparison (what he sees considering the players stance and body versus this arbitrary, invisible zone designed by a black-box, proprietary computer algorithm based on height.
- The measurements are imprecise. The zone is only measured from a plane that crosses the center point of the plate. Why does this matter? The system is not judging if the ball hits the front corner of the plate, which per the official rules is definitely a strike and historically always has been. It would also ignore movement as the ball traverses the plate. These would be a detriment to some of the greatest pitchers that have played the game who made their living nibbling away at the edges of the zone. Think Madox, Pedro Maritinez, and even Satchel Paige. This is also unfair to the umpires.
- But also related to precision, the system has a significant margin of error for the area where it does make its measurement, and it is overturning calls within this margin of error. I saw one call overturned on 1/8 of an inch, and according to reporting I read it will overturn calls that are also outside less than 0.1”.
- The median margin of error of the ABS system is 1/6th. However, league officials have noted they are 95 percent confident a pitch is within 0.39 inches and 99 percent confident it is within 0.48 inches of the system's determined location.
- To give this further context, around 75% of the days during the regular season have all 30 teams playing. So there would be 60 challenges available and given the success rate is around 50% on average that means more like 90 challenges. If twenty of those challenges were within 0.4 inches (don't know if this is reasonable but it doesn't seem unreasonable on its face) that means one of the systems calls was incorrect. That means everyday it makes at least one error. That's pretty lousy for replay, no?
- I can’t find a source on this now, but I know that on the radio they were discussing that this margin of error particularly applies to inside pitches for some reason.
- I love to complain about professional referees/umpires with the best of them, but, again, how is this fair to the umpires?
- And forgetting the umpires, how are all these things fair to the players and fans?
- Speaking of fans, the broadcast quality has declined. The announcers no longer can see any strike zone box or the dot that pinpointed where the ball was located at the plate on their in-game broadcast displays, and they acknowledge that to the fans and grumble they’d love to be able to see more to better inform fans on the happenings in the game. This was done to prevent cheating.
- And for the fans watching at home, gone also is the dot that located the ball when it crossed the plate and the strike zone box can be either completely suppressed or drawn to varying degrees of faintness that make it difficult to see especially with the ball moving at 100+ mph or some of the crazy high-spin rate ball movements.
Below are most of the sources I used in my rant.
- https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id...w-automated-ball-strike-challenge-system-rule
- https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/strike-zone
- https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7142476/2026/03/24/mlb-abs-error-margin/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Ball-Strike_System#:~:text=ABS reports pitch locations in,0.16 inches (4.1 mm)
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