I'm wary of an ABS challenge system, but I really don't want to see an ABS non-challenge system.
My biggest concern with the challenge system are selfish players challenging when they really shouldn't. And in case someone doesn't know, it's not just batters who can challenge, but the battery can too. I'd much rather it be up to the manager or someone else. And I realize that might take too long, but what if the player first made the signal to challenge, then the manager got 10 seconds to accept or reject it based on what his video coordinator told him. Somewhat relatedly, Foolish Bailey made
a fascinating video on the effectiveness of the Royals' Video Coordinator, Bill Duplissea. Maybe cut out the manager altogether and just have a direct line to each team's replay guy in the ump's gear.
Watching
videos of it in action is actually kind of interesting. At first I thought it would drag the game, but it actually adds to the suspense and thrill of the game. It seems like it takes less time (
15-20 seconds) than replays in MLB take now, which I think are way faster than they used to be (I swear they used to take several minutes sometimes).
Another thing I took away from the videos is I really don't think the minor leaguers were challenging like major leaguers would. They were challenging early and often, at counts that made little sense to challenge, and at pitches that were really too close to the zone. It was as if they didn't care one bit about game theory. And I'm not surprised by that, it's there to be tested after all, but how accurate can your findings be if it's not being tested how it would probably be used in the majors?
A while back I was reading
an ESPN article on the ABS systems and it sounded like players, and especially catchers, don't like the non-challenge system so I'm hoping the union wouldn't let it go through (I presume they'd still have to okay the kind they go with). I'd still like to see these skill differences between catchers and I like the game theory the challenge system adds.
It surprised me to learn MLB has to get it passed the umpire's union and I'm not sure how they'd take it. I imagine people might instantly assume umps would be against it, but they might welcome it. If they give the calls entirely to AI, then as an umpire you can't really feel bad when you make a bad call, you just blame it on the AI. And even if it's a challenge system, there still might be less pressure to make the call right because if you screw up, well, the batter has the challenge system. If I was an ump, I think I'd welcome it. As long as MLB doesn't also insist on a pay cut that is.
What I found most interesting in that article, however, was that, along with implementing some ABS system, they'd very likely change the strike zone to try to counter the increase in strikeouts. And do you just shrink it or do you play around with the heights, maybe say the zone is at the back or middle or front of home plate, maybe shrink the width of home plate? Who knows. The article even suggested making it oval-shaped which sounds crazy as that'd be way too much to ask of an ump, but if you're going all AI, then maybe it's not crazy.
It's curious that the strike zone, as it is defined now in the rules, isn't really the strike zone that ABS is set at. ABS is set at %s of a player's height (can you lie and say you're shorter or is it calculating your height?) whereas the rules define it at set points of the player's body (so the lower you crouch the smaller your strike zone). I prefer the idea of %s of a player's height so it doesn't matter how low you crouch, but I can't help but think the strike zone should be set at a size regardless of the batter. Without the guide of the player's body that might be too much to ask of a human however. And yeah, that might give an advantage to taller players, but right now there's an advantage to shorter players.
It also mentioned that at first ABS was set up like a 3d cube over home plate (like I think the rules imply umps are supposed to call it now), but that didn't work very well, so they went to a 2d plane at halfway depth over the plate for ABS. So unless you tell the umps to change their own strike zones to be like that of the AI, I don't see how you can really go with a challenge system. A strike with an ump could very legitimately be a ball to the AI and vice versa. I'm not sure if umps testing it have been told to adjust their own zone.
Anyway, as much as some of us have had enough with all the bad calls and want something different, I'm not so sure we're that close to seeing ABS in MLB. I was thinking that with how quickly they've introduced some of these other rules that there was a good chance we'd see ABS next year, but now I'm not sure. While it's fast and seems to work relatively well now, there seem to still be plenty of questions.