Before the first major league spring game to include an automated challenge system for reviewing balls and strikes, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had only one rule.
“I told Muncy not to challenge,” Roberts joked of veteran third baseman Max Muncy, a famously selective hitter with a critical eye at the plate. “He’s our biggest culprit of not agreeing with the strike zone. So I said, ‘Save your challenges.’”
In the Dodgers’ 12-4 spring training loss to the Chicago Cubs on Thursday at Camelback Ranch, Muncy obliged. Unfortunately for him, the pitcher he was facing didn’t.
In the bottom of the first inning, in an 0-and-1 count against Cubs right-hander Cody Poteet, Muncy took a called ball that was at the knees and over the inside corner of the plate.
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“When that ball crossed,” Muncy said, “I thought it was a strike right away.”
So did Poteet. And for the first time, there was something he could do about it.
After watching home plate umpire Tony Randazzo rule the pitch a ball, Poteet quickly tapped his head to signal for a challenge, triggering an immediate review using MLB’s automated ball-strike system (or ABS, for short). On the scoreboard, a digital rendering of the pitch suddenly appeared, one based on data from the Hawk-Eye ball tracking system installed at the ballpark. And then, much like the ball tracer technology used to review points in professional tennis, an animation showed that Poteet’s pitch had indeed clipped the corner of the zone.
A 1-and-1 count was changed to 0-and-2. Muncy, who struck out looking on a similar strike three pitches later, was left to be the victim of a milestone moment in baseball rules history.
“I look out there and he’s tapping his head,” Muncy recounted after the game, “and I went, ‘Well, I’m going to be the first one.’”
For now, MLB’s use of ABS is still in an exploratory phase. There are no plans to introduce the system in regular-season games yet. Questions remain about the precision of the technology and how large a role it should have in games that actually count.
“I’m curious to see how it plays out,” Roberts said before Thursday’s Cactus League opener. “Haven’t made a decision on if I’m a fan or not.”
After experimenting with ABS at various levels of the minor leagues over the last five years, MLB decided to give it a trial run in spring training, installing the Hawk-Eye technology at select ballparks — the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch among them — in its most ambitious effort yet to make balls and strikes reviewable.
“It’s interesting,” Muncy said. “I don’t hate the idea of it. The technology, I think they’ll admit, is not entirely there yet. But it’s a cool idea and I like it. It’s just something that’s different.”
In a nutshell, here are the rules:
• Pitchers, catchers and hitters can trigger a review on any pitch simply by tapping their head after a ball/strike call is made. No one else, including managers, can request a challenge.
• Each team will get a minimum of two challenges per game and will retain any challenges that are successful (so the Cubs still had two after Poteet’s successful challenge).
• Challenges must be signaled immediately after a pitch. If an umpire believes a pitcher, catcher or hitter delayed calling a challenge to look for a signal from the dugout, their request will not be granted.
“It doesn’t slow the game down at all,” Muncy said. “It moves fast.”
In fact, during its experimentation in the minors, MLB found that each challenge added only 17 seconds of game time. On Thursday, Muncy joked that the longest part of the process was Randazzo trying to get his stadium microphone to turn on in order to announce Poteet’s challenge to the crowd.
“It’s actually a pretty good system,” Roberts said after the game. “Especially in a big spot, you want to get the call right.”
If — or more likely, when — the system is incorporated into regular-season games, it likely will draw more polarizing views in a sport that has relied on umpires for balls and strikes for virtually its entire existence. Not only will the reliance on ball-tracking technology mark a substantial change, but also games would be infused with a new strategic dynamic — one that could go beyond figuring out the most optimal times to challenge a call.
“Pitchers eventually may be able to take advantage of certain things, or pitches that are just typically not called [for strikes now],” veteran outfielder Michael Conforto theorized. “But I guess that’s why we’re doing it in spring. So I’m excited to see how it goes.”
Hitters, conversely, also could benefit, since the ABS strike zone wouldn’t vary game to game the way the zone does with rotating umpires — especially in an era when catchers are taught to frame each pitch.
“When you get some really good catchers back there — like Will [Smith] and [Austin] Barnes, guys that can really stick a low pitch very well and make it look so much like a strike — you want to challenge it, but it’s a ball,” right-hander Bobby Miller, who experienced ABS during multiple stints in triple-A last year, said before Thursday’s game.
“I’m not a huge fan of it; I always liked the umpire calling balls and strikes,” Miller added. “But a ball is a ball and a strike is a strike. So it is what it is.”
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Smith said the Dodgers haven’t spent much time discussing the strategic elements of ABS in camp.
“I’m sure we’ll come up with a strategy of how we’re using it,” he said. “We’ll have the front office look at what makes sense in their mind, what makes sense in the hitter’s mind, what makes sense in the catcher’s mind. We’ll figure it out. But we’re not too worried about it.”
Muncy, meanwhile, was treated to some good-natured ribbing after Thursday’s ABS-assisted strikeout.
“Of course it’s me that gets the first one after all those guys are joking about it. So fitting,” Muncy said with a laugh. “When I came back, Freddie [Freeman] was waiting for me, just laughing right in my face. Go figure.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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