TEMPE, Ariz. — A few times through the middle innings of the Angels’ game Tuesday, a hitter would disagree with an umpire’s call, and then glare into the dugout at Travis d’Arnaud.
“Sorry,” the Angels catcher said with a shrug.
D’Arnaud had burned both of the Angels’ ABS challenges in the first three innings, leaving the team without the use of the ball-strike technology for the rest of the game.
D’Arnaud explained later that it’s all a part of the experimenting happening across the majors this spring, as players learn what the automated strike zone looks like, and which pitches they should challenge. A team only loses a challenge if it is wrong.
“The new zone is something I’m going to have to get used to,” said d’Arnaud, a veteran of 13 big-league seasons.
In theory, the strike zone should be the same. And on the pitches that the umpire calls, it should be unchanged. However, when teams dispute the calls and go to the ABS system, they are going to get something slightly different.
The automated strike zone is based purely on the hitter’s height, and not his stance. The bottom is 27% of his height and the top is 53.5%
Also, by rule the strike zone is a three-dimensional box above the entire plate, which is 17 inches wide and 17 inches deep at its point. When the ABS was used in the minors and spring training last year, it judged pitches by where they crossed the two-dimensional rectangle at the front of the plate.
Now, that two-dimensional rectangle is in the middle of the plate, 8½ inches closer to the catcher.
“I’m going to have to adapt my eyes to that as well because on the regular box on TV that was a ball, but on the ABS it was a strike because it came back and hit the middle of the plate,” d’Arnaud said.
He was talking about a key full-count pitch that he didn’t challenge Sunday, resulting in an Alek Manoah walk that should have been a strikeout. That was in the back of d’Arnaud’s mind when he more liberally used the challenges in his next start, resulting in the Angels losing both early in the game.
On Monday, catcher Logan O’Hoppe tried to challenge a Reid Detmers pitch in the first inning. It was a strike, but the system didn’t work because of a technical glitch. (According to MLB data, only 4 of 88,534 pitches went untracked because of technical problems last spring.) The Angels didn’t get the call, but they also weren’t charged with a challenge.
Later in the game, Wade Meckler started toward first on a 3-and-2 pitch that was out of the zone. It was called a strike. Meckler said he would have challenged, but he thought the Angels were out of challenges because he didn’t realize that they weren’t charged a challenge from the earlier instance. (During the regular season, the scoreboard will show how many challenges a team has.)
Everyone is adjusting to a system that has been in the works for a few years. It has been used the past two years at Triple-A, and last season it was exclusively a challenge system, rather than using the ABS to call all the pitches.
That’s why new Angels third-base coach Keith Johnson, who managed at Triple-A last year, will be a key contributor when the staff eventually determines what rules they’ll institute on who can challenge, and when.
“The biggest thing early in games, just so that we could get a feel for how the umpire was calling that particular night, we kind of limited the offensive ones until like there were runners in scoring position,” Johnson said. “Once we got later in games, guys were better at it.”
Johnson also said it was the catchers who challenged, not the pitchers. Although pitchers and catchers are allowed to challenge, a fairly standard strategy has evolved to prohibit all but the most veteran pitchers from challenging.
“The catchers have a lot better feel,” Johnson said. “They’re less emotional. There’s some emotion attached, but not as much as a pitcher.”
Data has shown catchers are much more accurate than pitchers in challenges, which is obviously because the catcher is much closer to the plate.
Among Angels’ hitters, Nolan Schanuel is widely expected to be one of the most frequent challengers. Schanuel prides himself on his plate discipline. He frequently let umpires know when he disagreed with their calls. Now, he’ll be able to do something about it.
“I’m excited,” Schanuel said. “I think it’s going to be a good opportunity for players to let their instincts kick in. There’s times where I go back to the dugout and I was wrong, and sometimes I go back and I was right. It’s going to be interesting to see how each team uses it … I’m excited to see where it takes us.”
Mike Trout will be a fascinating case study of the ABS system. Last year, Trout was the recipient of a major league-leading 116 incorrect calls that went his way, according to MLB data. He took 34 two-strike pitches that were called balls, even though they were in the strike zone. By contrast, only 32 pitches out of the zone were called strikes against Trout.
“I’m going to keep the same mentality, same strike zone,” Trout said. “If things get a little different down the road, you got to adjust. It’s going to be interesting.”
NOTES
Chase Shores and Nate Snead – two of the three Angels 2025 draft picks who are in big-league camp – pitched in Tuesday’s game. The third, first-round pick Tyler Bremner, is still not scheduled for his Cactus League debut. “He’s he’s working on his pitch mix right now,” manager Kurt Suzuki said. Bremner had another bullpen session Wednesday. …
Outfielder José Siri left the field with an athletic trainer after he was hit in the mouth by a fly ball that he lost in the sun during workouts Wednesday morning. …
A day after the Angels used minor-league pitcher Jacob Guardado in a game, Suzuki reflected on how strange that was. Guardado is the son of Eddie Guardado, a former big-league teammate of Suzuki’s and a current Angels minor-league pitching coach. “The last time I saw Jacob, I was playing catch with him when he was like 12 years old,” Suzuki said, “and now I’m bringing him into a big-league spring training game. I thought it was the coolest thing, and really good for him.”
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