ABS has been an SOB for the Rangers thus far
· Yahoo Sports
The Texas Rangers have been slow on the draw so far with the introduction of automated balls and strikes. There’s been plenty to like about how the first week of the season has gone for Texas, as they sit at 4-2 with two road series wins, but taking advantage of the potential competitive advantage afforded by the new ABS replay system seems to be a work in progress.
While I’ve been against a lot of the recent Manfred era rules changes, I’ve been waiting for practically my entire baseball-following life for robot umps and now it’s kind of here albeit with the twist that teams are allowed two failed challenges before they can no longer appeal to the divine intervention of replay on suspected blown ball/strike calls.
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Indeed, if I had my druthers, they’d just turn the hawkeye on for every pitch for a fully automated, purely human error-less experience. But there’s no doubt that the challenge system offers degrees of tactics and intrigue and here in the early goings, that’s been a fun new aspect for the baseball enjoyer and a nightmare for some umpires.
Team strategies and philosophies are developing. Do you challenge a close ball you’re fairly sure the ump got wrong in the 2nd inning of a scoreless game and risk being wrong and losing a challenge? Do you have a hierarchy for who can challenge? Do you save challenges for specific hitters or potential run-scoring rallies? Do you keep a challenge in your back pocket for a pitch that could determine the outcome of the game?
Each team likely has their own ideas on the hows and whens and whos and that undeniably adds an extra dimension of strategy to the rollout of this new tech and ruleset. With extra dimensions of strategy comes, frankly, people who are best at it or those who are best at exploiting it.
Right now, the Rangers are not those people.
So far this season Rangers hitters have made seven challenges and have succeed on three of them. The 43% success rate is good for 21st in the league. You know, whatever, it’s early. However, per Statcast’s ABS tracker, the Rangers have had the most opportunities in the league with 38 “reasonable” challenge chances and have only challenged on five of those offerings.
By Statcast’s estimation, the Rangers are about half a run in the hole due to their actual batting challenge decisions, which is third worst in the league. And their expected run value on potential overturns is -2.5 runs, second worst behind Cleveland.
Meanwhile, the Rangers have lost another estimated -0.2 runs on ABS challenges made by opponents against Texas hitters with teams going 5-for-6 on reversing a call.
The Rangers also had the indignity of being the first team to lose on a walk-off challenge in Wednesday’s finale in Baltimore. Though, it’s no surprise seeing the Rangers and Orioles involved in bizarre history.
It’s not any better when the Rangers are out on the field on defense, either. Texas is the only team in the league that has yet to win a challenge while an opponent is up to bat but they’ve also only challenged once overall with Kyle Higashioka losing a challenge on Sunday in Baltimore.
Despite the lack of challenges by Rangers pitchers and catchers, they’ve had 15 reasonable opportunities and challenged zero of them, worst in the league.
Meanwhile, while the Rangers are on defense, teams have gotten six of eight Texas offerings reversed with Baltimore going 5-for-5 on challenge attempts during the recent three-game set.
It’s obviously incredibly early and the technology and rule is brand new for most of the players and coaches, so there will be plenty of adjustments to be made. So far, however, the Rangers have been seeing a lot of chances to impact their game in their favor while being a bit gun-shy to pull the trigger.
Meanwhile, their opponents are taking advantage of the system and earning extra calls which has potentially led to snuffed out rallies that never were for Texas or more chances to add runs to the board for them.
Hopefully the Rangers do adjust and make better use of ABS because it’s not much fun being the team worst at humiliating umpires.