ABS & The Human Element
Names and faces from the first weekend of challenging balls and strikes.
It’s way too soon to get into the game theory aspects of ABS—that’ll be an ongoing project for everybody this year—but not too soon to look with curiosity at the people experiencing this system for the first time: umps, players, us, the fan in the white cap in the Dansby Swanson video clip, etc. I’ve got five-plus interesting videos from the first three days of this season.
1. Matt Olson’s Right To Challenge Is Rejected
Matt Olson wanted to challenge this pitch. But the umpire shook his head, “no, no, no,” deciding (presumably) that Olson hadn’t challenged it quickly enough.
Players are supposed to challenge immediately: “roughly two seconds after the pitch” is how it has been reported in several outlets, including MLB.com. That is a very rough standard indeed: Is it two seconds after the pitch, or is it two seconds after the umpire made the call? It must be the latter, but then is it two seconds after the umpire has voiced the strike, or deployed the physical “strike” move? Is it from the start of the mechanic or the conclusion of it? Even saying “strike” might take a quarter second, so it is timed from the S’s start or the K’s kicker? And does the player need to merely start his challenge within those two seconds—signaling his intent—or actually tap the helmet? The precision these questions presuppose is silly, because “roughly two seconds” is an amount of time designed to be approximate. It leaves this to be, inherently, a judgment call.
The judgment against Olson was extremely strict. From the time the pitch hit the catcher’s mitt to the time Olson’s hand hit his helmet was 2.16 seconds. It would be ridiculous to think the clock would start when the pitch lands, before the umpire has made the call—a batter couldn’t possibly be expected to preemptively challenge every single pitch he thinks is out of the zone—but even then, Olson completed his challenge in “roughly” two seconds.
From the umpire’s initial lean to the time Olson touched his helmet was 1.7 seconds. From the initiation of the umpire’s pointing mechanic to Olson’s head touch was 1.52 seconds. From the actual point of the umpire’s right hand to Olson’s tap was 1.23 seconds. And the time lapsed from the umpire’s point, to Olson beginning to raise his hand, was just 0.97 seconds. A reasonable assessment here is that Matt Olson spent 0.97 seconds deliberating. Less than one second! We’re not going to give him that? You gotta give him that.
This was a fairly low stakes situation—and Olson would have been wrong anyway, which he might have sensed in the microseconds after his tap—so this controversy came and went quickly. But the ambiguity here points to a looming Infuriating Moment In Baseball History. There is going to be a challenge in a big spot that is rejected because of this ambiguous standard, and we’re all going to go to war arguing about it.
(For that matter, we might also see the reverse: A player might make 90 percent of a challenge, only to pull away at the last second, as Max Muncy did here:
There was no challenge on that pitch. But will an umpire seeing a move like that rule that a challenge was issued, that intent was expressed? That a finger grazed? Yes. On a long enough timeline, yes.)
2. Eugenio Suárez Challenged Back-To-Back
Eugenio Suárez was punched out on a pitch inside, challenged it, and had the call overturned.
On the next pitch he was punched out on a pitch outside and challenged it, and had the call overturned.
I’ve probably watched 1,200 minutes of ball so far and this my favorite of them. I was giggling and cackling and hooting, despite having no interest at all in this game, so I can imagine what it was like in Cincinnati. (Suarez grounded out on the next pitch, sadly.)
There is one guy in the middle of all this amusement who is not amused: The home plate umpire, CB Bucknor. After the second pitch, he gives Suárez a look that is brand new for the ABS era. He’s not mad, exactly; it’s more like he’s looking at Suárez and wondering why other people have to exist at all:
This makes me wonder what the effect on umpiring will be. Umpires have always had bad days, just like anybody in any job. Sometimes they miss 15 calls. That happens, 15 missed calls in a day. And they hear complaints from the dugouts or the fans, but it probably doesn’t seem that unusual to them, because always hear complaints from the dugouts or the fans. They might have a sense that it’s not their best day, but the psychological damage of their missed calls is relatively contained. They probably think that they missed, at most, like four pitches. They’ll find out later it was 15, but by then they’re off the clock and it’s onto the next day.
ABS, though, means that on these bad days they’ll be caught sucking in real time. And there’s no ambiguity about it, no your word against mine. Each time you fail, it’s displayed on 24,000 square feet of scoreboard. And there is a decent chance that 800,000 square feet of humans will be celebrating and taunting you over it. Which raises the very, very, very real threat of umpires going on tilt in games, getting anxious, getting yippy, getting mad, feeling hurt.
