DUNEDIN, Fla. — If Tuesday was a sign of things to come, the Yankees are going to be fairly successful when using MLB’s automated ball-strike challenge system this season.
That’s because the team went 6-for-8 on challenges during a spring training game against the Blue Jays at TD Ballpark. The largely-accurate performance came in an 8-7 win.
“We want to be really good at it,” Aaron Boone said after the game. “We want to be the best at it. We’ve been preaching around here long enough about controlling the strike zone.”
The Yankees have been studying ABS for a while, and they’ve been practicing with it — including challenges — during live batting practice sessions since camp began. They’ve also been eager to challenge since exhibition play started.
But Tuesday’s game featured a barrage of challenges with Thomas Fornarola, a minor league umpire working his first big league spring training, per the Wendelstedt Umpire School, behind the plate. With him missing several pitches, Austin Wells and José Caballero each went 2-for-2 overturning calls. Caballero’s challenges came in the same plate appearance; the second one turned a strikeout into a walk.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. also had a successful challenge. Meanwhile, Trent Grisham went 1-for-2 on disputes, sparking some constructive criticism from Boone.
“I thought Grish’s second one where he was wrong was probably a little emotional for him,” the skipper said. “He kind of wanted to challenge the first one and then the last one, when he probably wasn’t convicted. But overall, I thought guys did a good job with it.”
Minor league catcher Miguel Palma also whiffed on a challenge.
With teams getting two challenges per game but keeping them so long as they are right, Boone said that the Yankees will be quick to object moving forward. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll tap their heads as much as they did Tuesday in every regular season game, and Boone wants to make sure his players understand situational leverage when doing so.
But he doesn’t want the Yankees to sit on their challenges either.
“We’ll evolve with that a little bit,” he said. “And I don’t think, necessarily, that Opening Day will be the same as July or August, maybe, as we get more and more entrenched with it. But we’re going to be aggressive. This isn’t, ‘Save them for the seventh, eighth and ninth [innings].’ No, no, no. I want us to be right. I want us to feel like [the umpire] missed the call, but sometimes that’s going to be a close one that we’re wrong on.”
