New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone has a love-hate relationship with the newly introduced automated umpiring in baseball. Boone, an initial skeptic of the new system, has been doing his best to make his squad wiser about challenging strike calls. However, after recording a 5 out of 5 successful challenges, the team has been on a downward slope, leaving skipper Boone visibly unhappy.
In what was their first loss of the season, the Yankees found a silver lining against the Seattle Mariners by winning all their ABS Challenges. Despite the loss, they had a 100% success rate when it came to challenging strikes. But it was short-lived. Since then, they have lost 13 of 16 ABS challenges. The Yankees’ hitters rank 22nd with a 44% success rate, reported NJ.com. Their hitters have won only 10 out of 23 challenges, and Aaron Boone has not hesitated to call them out, especially after their loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.
“Not very good ones,” remarked Boone, according to NJ.com.
Against the Rays, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Jose Caballero exhausted their quota of 2 challenges before the game was even halfway through. They erroneously challenged a first-pitch strike call without anyone on base.
The same happened against the Athletics, too, and Caballero was once again one of the culprits. In the fifth inning, when both teams were scoreless, Caballero challenged a 2-0 pitch and lost. The bases were empty that time around as well. Cody Bellinger used up the second challenge on a 1-1 pitch in the seventh inning.
The Yankees have conducted thorough ABS meetings throughout Spring Training to sharpen their hitters’ challenge skills. Boone and team reviewed videos on ABS calls from different games, stressing the importance of being aggressive yet accurate. These meetings did not completely go to waste, as a few of the sluggers have challenged calls successfully.
According to NJ.com, among the Yankees’ hitters who have challenged, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Trent Grisham have had success. Judge is 2-for-2, Stanton is 1-for-1, and Grisham has correctly challenged 3 out of 4.
According to ESPN’s ABS challenge tracker, the Cincinnati Reds’ batters have the best success rate in the majors at 66.7%. Overall, the Yankees have a 53.1% success rate, ranking 17th. The Arizona Diamondbacks and the Cincinnati Reds are at the top of the table at 65.2%.
Despite his frustration over the wasted challenges in their loss to the Rays, Boone remained optimistic. He admitted that they will go through ups and downs while adjusting to this new system.
“Tonight, probably not great challenges there, but it’s something I feel like we’ll be good at,” observed Boone, as per NJ.com. “We’re going to be aggressive at certain times, and that’s razor-thin calls sometimes. So, there’s going to be weeks where it’s not great. There’s going to be weeks where you’re kind of killing it.”
With the Yankees’ hitters still learning their individual strike zones, first baseman Ben Rice and catcher Austin Wells have shared their own outlook about the ABS.
Yankees’ Ben Rice and Austin Wells talk ABS, and its challenges
Aaron Boone had advised his hitters to be aggressive with the ABS challenges. But he certainly did not want them to lack in accuracy or waste them as they did against the Rays and the Athletics.
Though Austin Wells might have taken the advice to be aggressive much too seriously. He has challenged twice so far, and both were wrong. Wells admitted that, in hindsight, some of their calls did not look good.
“I think for the most part they’ve all been pretty close. We’re told to be aggressive and use them. I think you can always hindsight and look back and think, ‘Oh, man, I should have maybe not used it there,” Wells revealed.
As per NJ.com, he further added, “But they told us to be aggressive and use it when you think it’s a ball. So, there’s been some really, really close ones that haven’t got our way, but I think that’s just the game.”
According to NJ.com, Rice stated, “The only way we’re going to learn is if we fail sometimes. So those failures that we’ve had so far in terms of understanding what the strike zone is for each guy are going to help us make the adjustments when it starts to matter even more later in the year.”
The numbers don’t look good for Yankees’ hitters like Caballero, Chisholm Jr., and Bellinger as well. Caballero has challenged as many as five times, but only 2 were correct. Chisholm is next with his record being 1-for-4, while both the challenges Bellinger made were wrong.
