Major League Baseball as a whole is going to have a learning curve this year when it comes to the automated ball-strike system.
ABS isn’t just a way to get more calls right, at least not the way the league’s 30 teams are looking at it. Winning the most challenges, at the highest success rates, equals a competitive advantage. And the Kansas City Royals are doing everything they can to get a jump on the rest of the league.
On Friday, MLB.com Royals beat writer Anne Rogers reported that Kansas City has devised a system to test their success on challenges during spring training games without using up official challenges.
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How Royals’ ABS self-testing is working
According to Rogers, Royals bench coach Paul Hoover came up with a system in which pitchers can tap on their chest if they think a pitch would be worth challenging, but don’t want to stop the game by issuing an official challenge (either because the coaching staff doesn’t want them doing it, or the team is already out of challenges).
“Just more reps,” manager Matt Quatraro said of the system, per Rogers. “We’ve been talking all winter about what we’re going to do and want the guys to use it. We’re tracking who’s doing it, when they’re doing it, situations, pitch types. We’re trying to keep track as much as we can.”
At the end of an inning, if a pitcher has “challenged” a ball call using the internal system, someone will let them know after the frame ends whether they would have likely been successful. It’s also a helpful tool to learn the strike zone itself, which will likely generate some borderline calls that go the opposite way the players are used to, on both sides.
Per Rogers’ report, the Royals prefer to have their hitters use the official challenges at this juncture. Whether that will remain the case heading into the regular season remains to be seen, and that’s another plot point worth monitoring as the Royals speed into March.
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