SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Major League Baseball had a successful test run debut of its Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system Friday at Salt River Fields, the spring training home shared by the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
Under the ABS system, teams can challenge the home-plate umpire twice each per game to review any ball or strike call. If you’re wrong, you lose it. If you’re right, you maintain that challenge. The D-backs were right on both of their two challenges that afternoon. Later in the game, the Rockies were right on back-to-back pitches.
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This was the first Arizona start for Corbin Burnes, the right-hander who signed as a marquee free agent with the D-backs this offseason on a six-year, $210 million deal that includes a player opt-out after the second year. And he was impressed.
“I thought today [the system] was great,” he said.
He had good reason to feel that way. In the top of the first inning, Burnes was having his way with the Rockies. Burnes had whiffed the leadoff hitter, Brenton Doyle, and his 1-2 pitch to Kyle Farmer was called a ball. The pitch was close enough that D-backs catcher Gabriel Moreno questioned it, “but was a little bit hesitant,” Burnes said.
Unlike instant replay challenges that come off the bench from the manager, only the catcher, pitcher or hitter can challenge the umpire’s pitch call by immediately tapping his cap or helmet. The umpire still makes the call, but the Hawk-Eye technology system can be utilized to overrule him.
“He looked at me like ‘should I do it?’ I said, ‘Go ahead, you’re the one catching. You know the zone better than I do,’” Burnes said. “Good thing he did.”
The strike zone was shown on the scoreboard and revealed the pitch had actually hit the lower left-hand corner. Strike three. Ryan McMahon struck out swinging to end the inning and Burnes’ first D-backs performance.
Burnes, for his part, said he had no change of focus pitching under the ABS than purely the variations of a particular plate umpire’s strike zone.
“I totally forgot about the ABS until I threw that pitch and everyone started yelling. Moreno tapped his head, and it turned out to be a punch out,” he said. “As of today, I liked the ABS. Ask me the next time I go out.”
The ABS system has come to a ballpark near you this spring: 13 of them, in fact—five in Arizona and eight in Florida. The five in Arizona are installed in complexes shared by two teams, like Salt River,…