BALTIMORE—The Orioles are three games into the Automatic Ball-Strike System era and are happy with the early returns.
Sunday’s 8-6 win over the Minnesota Twins featured two critical successful challenges, one by designated hitter Pete Alonso in the seventh, and another by closer Ryan Helsley in the ninth.
Alonso’s challenge preceded the go-ahead RBI. Helsley’s turned a walk into a strikeout and elicited an ejection of Twins manager Derek Shelton, who argued Helsley didn’t call for an appeal immediately.
“I tried to react. I had a plan in my head and felt like I executed it, and we challenged it,” Helsley said.
Ordinarily, pitchers leave the challenges to catchers.
“They’re right there,” Helsley said. “They’re the closest ones to it. As a pitcher you’re moving pretty fast on the mound. Your vision of the ball crossing the plate isn’t going to be as quick as the catcher’s. Trusting the catcher is the way to go.”
On Sunday, there were 10 challenges, and seven calls were overturned. According to Baseball Savant, there have been 175 challenges through Sunday. Fifty-four percent have been successful, though only 42 percent of batters’ challenges were overturned. Sixty-three percent of pitcher and catcher challenges have been successful.
Five of the Orioles’ seven challenges have been successful, and Helsley likes the new system.
“Over the course of my career, there’s been a few times I wished I had that option,” Helsley said. “Obviously, it paid off yesterday.”
In the first 47 games played through Sunday, Chris Segal, who worked home plate on Sunday, had the third-worst accuracy rate, 88.82 percent, according to Umpscorecards.com. Laz Diaz, who was behind the plate for Thursday’s opener, had a 92.56 percent accuracy rate, and Brian O’Nora, Saturday’s home plate umpire, had a 94.22 percent accuracy rate.
Reliever Dietrich Enns is also a supporter of the new system that requires that the challenges come from only the batter, the catcher or the pitcher. The challenges also must be made immediately. Teams get two per game, and retain them if the challenge is successful.
“I think it’s good,” Enns said. “Just getting the calls right is nice. Whether it affects your team in a positive or negative way. There’s strategy involved in when to use them and when to save them. I think it can help the game overall. I think the fans like it, and I think the players like it as far as getting the calls right.”
Enns wants Oriole catchers to make the calls on pitches.
“Not unless it’s blatant. I trust our catchers to handle that,” Enns said. “They’re going to know the zone from the hitter, from hitter-to-hitter a little bit better just because they’re a lot closer. With pitchers we can be a little biased in the moment.”
Manager Craig Albernaz has encouraged his players to use the challenge.
“Yesterday was awesome,” Albernaz said. “I was encouraging our catchers, even in spring training, to challenge … It’s there for us to use. We should use it.”
He thinks calls are being made differently.
“Umpires in recent history view the strike zone as an oval, not a square, so you’ve been seeing those top corner ones be called,” he said. “I think catchers and hitters are not used to those pitches being called strikes, but they actually are.
“The taller guys, there’s more room at the top, and not so much at the bottom and vice-versa with the shorter guys, where there’s a lot more room at the bottom as opposed to the top.”
Zach Eflin, who’ll start on Tuesday, is taking a wait-and-see approach on ABS.
“There are certain calls that should be made to keep the integrity and the authenticity of the game alive,” Eflin said. “There’s been a couple of big spots in the last two games that have helped us. A couple have resulted in not helping us, but I do lean to the side of being true and 100 percent.”
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