In 1950s Northern Kentucky, we played Knothole Baseball—Class C, B or A, depending on each player’s age—instead of Little League.
We had shirts and hats instead of full uniforms and turned in our shirts at the end of the season so they could be re-issued the next spring. (Some boys pinned pieces of paper with their names to their shirts in hopes they’d get the same ones the next year.)
And we didn’t always have a home plate umpire. I played a few games in which the man judging balls and strikes was perched on a step ladder behind the pitcher for lack of the usual protective equipment.
It was as far from today’s Automated Ball-Strike System, Major League Baseball’s ABS, as you could get.
On many occasions this summer I’ve recalled that guy calling pitches like a house painter, each time wondering what today’s players—at any level—would say if they had to accept such an inexact, imperfect way of concluding from afar if a given pitch was a ball or a strike.
This is MLB’s first season allowing pitchers, catchers and batters—no other players and no manager or coach—to be the equivalent of the man on the step ladder, on occasions of their choosing.
Each team starts every Major League game with two challenges, which the specified players can use at any point in a plate appearance. They must indicate their challenge immediately after the pitch by tapping their batting helmet.
Whenever a ball- or strike-call is challenged, that team retains its challenge (to be used again at some later moment in the game) if the umpire is overruled by video replay. But the questioning team loses further use of that challenge when the strike-zone cameras uphold the ump.
By the All-Star Break last week, 6,040 pitches had been disputed, and “the man on the ladder” prevailed 53% of the time. That meant the men behind the mask were right slightly less than half the time on close calls that were questioned.
The Cincinnati Reds (64.4%) and Arizona Diamondbacks (62.2%) were the most successful teams at challenging the home plate umpire through the end of play on the Sunday before the All-Star Game.
Reds batterymates were the best in baseball, with 73.1% of their replays overturned (led by catcher Tyler Stephenson’s 72.9% success rate on 85 challenges), and their batters were second among all 30 teams at 55.9%.
The Rockies were 13th overall at 54.7%. Their hitters were 22nd, at 43.% correct challenges, and Colorado catchers and pitchers ranked sixth with 63.7% of their challenges upheld.
If you’re under the impression that Hunter Goodman might make a good ball-strike ump, the stats justify that feeling. Through 98 games, he ranked fourth in baseball with 53 successful challenges in 79 taps of his helmet—67.1%.
According to ESPN’s compilation, 91 umpires had calls questioned leading up to the All-Star Break.
Thirty-three of them were found to be correct more than half the time they were challenged, led by newcomers Louie Kroupa (33.3%) and Derek Thomas (34.6%).
The most often challenged were 28-year veteran Hunter Wendelstadt and Lance Barrett (hired by MLB is 2012), each 99 times, and Ryan Additon, a former minor league pitcher who made his MLB umpiring debut in 2017, 98 times. Wendelstadt and Barrett both were overturned 58.6% of the time; Additon 48% (25th best).
I’ve been asked what I think of the ABS and its addition to Major League baseball.
Baseball purist that I am, I nonetheless am all for getting it right, whether that’s a tag play, fair or foul, or balls and strikes. If that involves the use of modern technology, so be it.
I do think, though, that there’s room for refinement.
First, teams should develop a strategy for utilizing their challenges. It makes no sense to me to challenge a ball or strike call in the first or second inning of a scoreless game with no runners on base. To me, those are ego challenges. They do virtually nothing to help a team win.
Saving challenges for when they can impact the outcome makes a lot more sense. There’s no better example than Braxton Fulford in a recent Rockies game. He used the same challenge three times to turn pitches called balls into strikes, at the end of a game Colorado held on to win.
Second, MLB should limit challenges to catchers and batters. Including pitchers is like moving the home plate umpire to a step ladder behind the mound.
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Denny Dressman writes a weekly sports column for The Villager. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.