 |
| J.T. Realmuto has been one of the best catchers in baseball in utilizing ABS challenges behind the plate. |
Not where it is.
When to question it.
Major League Baseball’s first season with the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System has turned one of the sport’s oldest arguments into a resource-management problem. Beginning Tuesday in the postseason, the consequences of getting that calculation wrong become considerably larger.
The rules themselves do not change. Each team begins a postseason game with two challenges, retains a challenge when it successfully overturns the umpire’s call and receives another at the start of an extra inning if it has exhausted its supply. Only the batter, pitcher or catcher can initiate a challenge, without assistance from the dugout.
That leaves the Phillies with an interesting October question:
Who should spend them?
Trea Turner offered perhaps the clearest glimpse Monday into how Philadelphia is thinking about it.
“I’d like JT to have them,” Turner said. “He’s obviously been so good for us, and if you have a lead late, you want JT to have them.”
There is plenty of logic behind that preference.
Realmuto has been one of baseball’s most accurate ABS challengers behind the plate, winning roughly 80 percent of his defensive challenges. The Phillies have become comfortable enough with his eye that interim manager Don Mattingly has suggested Realmuto could occasionally be even more aggressive.
That creates an October tension that did not exist before this season.
A hitter may desperately want to erase a called strike in the third inning. But losing that challenge might prevent Realmuto from turning a borderline ball into strike three with runners aboard in the eighth.
Turner understands the tradeoff.
Early in the season, he said, his challenges were largely situational. If runners were in scoring position and a questionable strike ended an inning, he sometimes challenged even when he suspected the call might stand.
Now he is more selective.
“Never, man,” Turner said when asked how often he knows with certainty that a pitch was a ball. “There’s always a little bit of a second doubt.”
That uncertainty matters because the margins can be microscopic.
MLB’s computerized strike zone is a two-dimensional rectangle at the midpoint of home plate. It is 17 inches wide, while its top and bottom are determined from measurements tied to each hitter’s height. If any portion of the baseball touches the zone, the pitch is a strike.
What looks several inches outside from the batter’s box can be considerably closer.
Turner experienced that Sunday. He considered challenging a splitter down and away but ultimately decided against it, partially because he wanted Realmuto to retain the club’s challenges. The pitch clipped the zone.
“You’ve just kind of got to process that as fast as you can and trust yourself,” Turner said.
Realmuto sees the same system from an entirely different angle.
Catching, he said Monday, makes judging the zone substantially easier than hitting. After a full season working with ABS, Realmuto believes he has become increasingly comfortable recognizing pitches that should be overturned.
“I know the zone pretty well,” Realmuto said. “So if I think it’s a strike, just challenge it, not think about the situation too much.”
Still, there is a limit.
“I don’t want to get crazy with it and start wasting challenges in spots that we don’t need it.”
That distinction could become critical in October.
A borderline pitch early in a game with nobody aboard — particularly before the count reaches a pivotal point — may not warrant risking one of only two challenges. Put runners aboard, change the count to 2-2 or 3-2 or move the situation into the late innings, and the value changes dramatically.
MLB’s own research into ABS strategy has demonstrated why. The expected run-value swing between ball four and strike three on a full count is dramatically greater than the difference between ball one and strike one.
The Phillies already have seen the consequences.
Earlier this month, Realmuto successfully challenged a 2-2 pitch with the bases loaded against Atlanta, converting a called ball into strike three. Two days later, he successfully overturned two called balls into strikes while catching Jesús Luzardo’s complete-game shutout of the Braves.
Those are not merely corrected calls anymore.
They are potential postseason leverage points.
And the Phillies have arrived at an intriguing conclusion during their first year living with the system: Their best use of a challenge may occasionally be refusing to use one.
That is where Turner’s comment becomes significant.
Saving a challenge for Realmuto is no longer simply courtesy to the catcher. It is strategy.
One pitch can extend an inning. One overturned call can end one.
And for the first time in Major League postseason history, a Phillies hitter may have only a couple of seconds to decide whether proving an umpire wrong in the third inning is worth losing the chance for Realmuto to prove one wrong in the eighth.
More Phillies Coverage
Loading Phillies schedule...
Loading NL East standings...
