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MLB’s automated ball-strike challenge system is brand new, and yet ABS already feels like an embedded part of the big leagues.
That’s especially true when you’re at the ballpark. Every time you see a batter, catcher or, once in a while, a pitcher tap his cap to initiate a review, there’s a little surge of energy in the venue. Is it or is it not?
“As with a lot of the new things over the years that MLB has implemented,” Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash mentioned earlier this season, “there’s a lot of talk about it, and then you’re two weeks into the season, it feels totally normal. It actually feels to me that we’ve had this system for quite some time.”
The reaction throughout the sport has been mostly positive so far. While it’ll take years to truly assess the effects of ABS on the game, we can at least dive into the early results and see what stands out.
So let’s do that, using the same FAQ-style format we used recently while musing about this season’s early AL standings.
Not even close, and this is one of the biggest surprises of early ABS-related numbers. The sheer disparity of challenges from team to team is enormous.
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The Minnesota Twins are the most liberal challengers under the new system, leading the way with 124. The most conservative team has been the Boston Red Sox at 63. These two teams, for all their differences in the rate of challenges, both spread those challenges fairly equally between their batters and defenders. That’s not the case with everyone.
The Miami Marlins are by far the MLB leader in challenges from defenders (90), mostly their catchers (remember, only hitters, catchers and pitchers can challenge a call). But the Marlins rank 29th in challenges from their hitters. The Baltimore Orioles flip that around — they’re tied for sixth in challenges from hitters, but 29th from defenders.
Why? Likely because we’re still very much in a feeling-out period, as teams try different philosophies. There will always be differences, but the kind of spreads we’re seeing now will probably — but not definitely — shrink.
According to the run values applied to ABS challenges by Statcast, the Twins and Colorado Rockies lead the way with 4.4 runs better than expectation, which translates to a little under a half-win. Those clubs are six runs better than the last-place Texas Rangers, at minus-1.6 runs against expectation. That six-run spread, translated to the full season, could mean a difference of around three wins. It’s no small thing.
The Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals are tied for first with an average of 0.13 runs gained per challenge. The Red Sox are among the clubs tied for second at 0.12, but because Boston challenges so infrequently, their bottom-line total of 1.3 runs below expectation ranks 28th.
The lesson: Challenge more, Red Sox!
The early victims of the system appear to be catchers whose standout skill is pitch-framing.
Pitch-framing is still an important skill for catchers, obviously, but the opportunities to steal strikes have become diminished. For example, last season, the top 30 pitch framers in the FanGraphs model averaged 0.704 runs due to framing per 100 innings caught. So far in 2026, the comparable number is 0.565, nearly a 20% drop.
It sure as heck seems to be the Cubs’ Carson Kelly. He’s 21-4 in challenges while catching, an 84% success rate that Baseball Savant translates to 2.3 runs above expectation, far and away the highest total of any catcher, hitter or pitcher. He is also one-for-one challenging as a hitter, which is worth another 0.3 runs.
If Carson Kelly were a team, his 2.6 runs above expectation for ABS challenges would rank seventh in MLB. Who needs AI when we’ve got CK?
Walks are up, and they are up a lot.
“The same thing that happened in the minor leagues,” Chicago Cubs president Jed Hoyer mentioned during the team’s last homestand. “I don’t think this is unexpected at all. I think it’s our job to make those adjustments.”
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The walk rate (9.4%) is 1% higher than last year’s end-of-season figure. If the current rate holds up the rest of the way (given the usual trajectory of that stat, it might decline a bit), it would be the highest in more than a quarter century. Coincidence? Highly unlikely.
Only five seasons have produced a walk rate higher than 9.5%: 1948 to 1951 and 2000.
When the walk rate has climbed to 9% or more, it has often been caused by some kind of intrusion in the game. This doesn’t explain all such seasons — if anyone can figure out why walk rates skyrocketed in the late 1940s, they’d be doing baseball historians a favor — but some past spikes can be traced to expansion, changes to the strike zone, messing with the height of the mound and, now, the introduction of automated umpiring.
If we can agree that baseball doesn’t really need an era defined by lots of walks, we can take solace that the kind of adjustments Hoyer alludes to have always been discovered, and walk-rate spikes have ebbed.
Seems so, yes. This season, 47.3% of pitches have been in what now constitutes the strike zone. The data goes back to 2008 in that model, and this is the nadir for the 17 measured seasons. The highest figure was last year — 50.6%.
That is, needless to say, a huge difference.
This is a pejorative way of asking whether hitters are swinging less, both in general and on pitches in the zone. The answer to both is yes: Passivity seems to be all the rage.
The swing rate so far (46.9%) is down from 47.8% last season. This number had risen in recent years as hitters have become more aggressive early in counts to combat today’s nasty pitching arsenals. So historically speaking, the new numbers aren’t outrageous.
Filtered down to swings on pitches in the zone, there’s roughly the same level of decrease, though the model used at FanGraphs shows an even starker drop on in-zone offerings. Hitters are swinging less but, again, over the past few seasons, they were swinging more. So maybe it’s all ABS, or maybe there is some historical regression happening, too.
Well … maybe not. Teams have scored 4.42 runs per game so far, down from 4.45 last season which, itself, was on the low end for the 2000s. This number should go up as the weather warms, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll look like any kind of offensive explosion.
No one can hit.
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That’s an exaggeration, but not as much of one as you might wish. The aggregate batting average is .241, down from .245 a year ago. This is another number that will likely rise a bit as we approach summer, but this is still awfully low. If the number doesn’t go up, it would be the third-lowest ever, behind 1908 and 1968 — two of baseball’s most offense-starved seasons.
Low averages usually dovetail with high strikeout rates, but the strikeout rate (22%) is down a tick from what it was a year ago (22.2%). The big thing holding down average is a chronically depressed BABIP. The current .288 figure, if it holds, would be the lowest since 1992.
This has nothing obvious to do with ABS, but it does merit consideration when we wonder why the smaller zone and its accompanying walks haven’t resulted in an offensive onslaught.
Not so far. The homer rate (2.8%) is down from last season’s 3.1%. We should also see an uptick in homers. But we might not see an increase over last year by the end of the season. Home run rates often fluctuate from season to season, so it might be hard to tease APS effects out of a hodgepodge of factors.
For now though, ABS hasn’t led to noticeably more offense. It has just led to more walks.
When we’ve seen conflict spurred by ABS, generally it’s been about umpire decisions on whether or not to grant a challenge.
Some managers have noticed some inconsistencies between umpiring crews.
“It has been less than I would have anticipated,” Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro mentioned, a day after he went onto the field to argue about a challenge that was allowed after what he felt was too much of a delay. “Some of the crews have been very adamant about being immediate, and you have to [tap] the top of the helmet. Sometimes you see the side of the helmet is accepted. Sometimes you see more of a delay is accepted.”
Expect this to be cleaned up over time. After all, teams, players and umpires alike are all still just learning what automated baseball really means.
But the best news so far might simply be this: Robot ump or not, it still just feels like baseball.
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