How Have MLB Umpires Performed In The ABS Era So Far? A Breakdown

Transparency and reliability. That's what Major League Baseball and its fans were hoping for when the new Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) was implemented into the game this season. Everyone involved, whether that's in the dugout, league office, or in the stands, wants to know whether the game is being called properly or not. It's the biggest change since the pitch clock, but the question is: How are MLB homeplate umpires performing in this new system?

The data might shock you. 

A quick reminder: the new ABS system gives each team two challenges per game on the home-plate umpire’s ball/strike calls. Only the pitcher, catcher, or batter involved in the play can request a challenge. You get the call right, you keep the challenge. Wrong, it's gone. 

After years of watching Angel Hernandez blow calls behind the plate, and seeing the first female umpire in MLB history make one of the worst calls you'll ever see in Spring Training, you'd think these fallible humans we all love to gripe about wouldn't be fairing too well. That couldn't be further from the truth.

So far this season, according to Savant (baseballsavant.mlb.com), a comprehensive tool for MLB advanced analytics, which hosts, analyzes, and visualizes Statcast data, there have been 1,143 challenges through the first three weeks of the season. That's about four challenges per game, which makes sense because each team gets two. But that only constitutes about 1 percent of the roughly 80,000 pitches thrown being challenged.

Here are the stats (as of the morning of April 17):

• 54% of challenged pitches have been overturned
• Fielders (60%) are currently having more success than batters (47%) in challenges
• Atlanta Braves are the least successful challenging team when batting (25%)
• Washington Nationals* are the least successful challenging team when fielding (39%)
• 49 of 83 umpires are missing calls by an average of less than one inch, according to Tap To Challenge.

*Nationals are also second to last in successful challenges when batting. Yikes.

Another fun fact, as stated by Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports, "umpires, outfitted with earpieces, can now get real-time feedback on any pitch (challenged or not) by asking the ABS operator, "Did I miss that?" Those data points should add up to continually improve their accuracy moving forward."

This goes back to what I was saying from the outset. The league, its players, and fans wanted the most accurate strike zone in MLB history and they've got it this season. There has never been a time in MLB history where the strike zone is less arbitrary. That's good for ball. That creates trust in a system based on accuracy, transparency and reliability. 

Overall the boys (plus one chick) in blue are doing pretty well, I'd say. Let's hold off on the robot umpires for a little while.