PHOENIX — It took no time for the Arizona Diamondbacks to use their first Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge this season, as Corbin Carroll benefitted from overturning a called third strike that missed the zone by 0.2 inches at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day.
Since then, the Diamondbacks have been on the conservative side of using their challenges, sticking to clear guidelines from the coaching staff one week into the season.
“Pitchers are not allowed to call it,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “I want the catcher to take control of that. So the catcher for the battery, and then the hitter. I want to be armed with one in the seventh inning or later, so you don’t have a (Geraldo) Perdomo situation that ends a game. At times, we are walking home with two in our pocket, and we’ve missed a couple of challenges early in the game.”
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There is a scale in regards to leverage and how certain the player is that they will overturn a call.
“A 1-0 fastball with two outs in the fourth inning isn’t necessarily an impact moment,” Lovullo said. “So we want to have high impact with high degree of certainty. We want to fill that box. Impact, low certainty, depending on the time of the game. High certainty, let’s go all the time. High certainty, low impact, we’re going to go all the time.
“But you’ve got to be certain. So we talk about two balls off, a ball-and-a-half off, before you start checking in or out of that.”
Through eight games, the Diamondbacks used eight challenges (five overturned calls), the fewest in Major League Baseball after Thursday’s slate. To compare, the Minnesota Twins lead baseball with 26 of them, although most clubs fall within 11-14.
The D-backs went 0-for-1 on Thursday against the Braves, although an Atlanta challenge became consequential, as it flipped a Ryne Nelson strike out of Ozzie Albies to a lead-off walk that started an eight-run inning. A lot went wrong after the challenge, including Arizona missing one, but it showed how the system can change the outlook of innings and force the losing side to move on quickly.
“It definitely affected the inning,” Nelson said. “But, it’s a ball. And the system is designed to get those calls right. … I’m not feeling some type of way because it got overturned. I’m more frustrated that I walked him.”
Lovullo said the Diamondbacks will continue to evaluate the best times to use their challenges now that ABS is in games that count. Arizona and the other 29 teams had opportunities to try it out in spring training over the past two years, and many younger players used it in the minor leagues.
Major League Baseball sent out a report on Thursday that through one week, 55% of challenges were successful, 52% from the hitters and 58% from the pitcher or catcher. Teams get two challenges which have to be initiated by the pitcher, catcher or hitter within a couple seconds of the call being made. Clubs keep challenges if they are successful.
The overturn rate when a team has one challenge left jumps significantly from 51% to 66%, as teams are more careful when they could run out.
The ninth inning is the frame with the most challenges so far at 4.3%, naturally as teams have to use it or lose it at the end of games. The ninth inning is followed by the seventh and eighth innings at 3.1% each.
Baseball Savant has even come out with metrics to evaluate how teams are taking advantage, including runs gained per challenge. The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles are early leaders in that category at 0.22.
Diamondbacks adjusting to ABS
On Wednesday, D-backs pitcher Zac Gallen struck out Detroit Tigers hitter Matt Vierling looking, but Vierling tapped his helmet and kept the at-bat alive. Vierling ended up fouling off a pitch and hitting a single.
“That’s kind of been the one feeling I’ve been, I don’t know about dreading, but just wondering how I was going to react,” Gallen said. “It’s a little odd. Thankfully, it wasn’t a huge spot, but it is a little weird, especially in that case to flip a count from 2-2 to 3-2. But you got to tip your cap when a guy feels like it’s a ball. So just got to make a better pitch next time.”
On Tuesday, the Tigers went 4-for-5 on challenges, as Kerry Carpenter and Gleyber Torres both flipped strikeouts into walks, although D-backs catcher James McCann also earned a strikeout of Torres with a challenge.
“It’s honestly not too new for most of us in here,” Tuesday’s D-backs starter Brandon Pfaadt said. “We used it in the minor leagues quite a bit. So we’ve gone maybe a year or two without it, but we’ve known it, and you can use it to your advantage sometimes, and sometimes it’ll get you. I think it’s just the way of the game now. I kind of like it. It keeps it honest. I know others will say differently.”
ABS also creates a buzz in the ballpark with fans reacting to the call one way or another, especially when the pitch misses the zone or clips the zone by 0.1 inch.
It does not take long for the pitch to show up on a graphic on the video board, about 13 seconds, as the games are not significantly delayed as can happen with replay reviews.
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