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Fun With ABS

By
Rice Cube
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170

So Facebook can be useful every now and then in alerting me to some fun stuff, and in this case, it seems Baseball-Reference now has a page for curating all the ABS challenge results so far. It’s actually very comprehensive, including the display of zone maps where overturns are more likely and where batters and the battery are more likely to challenge. Here are some fun things I noticed in a cursory scan of all this data…

The Big Picture

At the top, you can see that there are over 4000 challenges so far this season. By and large the catchers and batters have significantly more than the relative handful by pitchers, which makes sense given that most teams all but forbid their pitchers from challenging a pitch. It makes sense too, because the catchers have the best view of the zone from their vantage point, and the batters are to the side but still have at least some idea of what to swing at and what to let go, but pitchers might potentially be fooled by their angle coming off the mound post-delivery or being tricked by the catcher’s own framing ability. Catchers to this point have accumulated a 59.5% overturn rate, while batters might not know the zone as well as they think, with only a 47.0% overturn rate. And in their 88 challenges, the pitcher group has only been right 30 times, for a really poor 34.1% overturn rate. So yeah, don’t let pitchers challenge on the regular (which seems to have held through this first third of the season) but maybe don’t forbid them outright.

The Situation

This is a fun section right underneath the initial summary, with leverage indices, baserunner situations, and month by month. Over the course of the season, the number of challenges per game has hovered around four, which coincidentally (or maybe not) accounts for the four challenges (two for each team) allotted at the beginning of the game.

How Teams (and Players) Are Doing

This part is particularly kind to the Cubs, as although they do not challenge quite as much as some teams (they’re more in the middle of the pack), and the catching group is atop the entire league, with a 72.9% overturn rate. There’s stuff about leverage index too, and generally it seems with an aaverage 1.07 leverage index, the Cubs generally know when to use their challenge.

The high catcher overturn rate on the Cubs is buoyed by Carson Kelly, who has challenged 32 times behind the dish with an incredible 84.4% overturn rate, which is not tops in all of MLB but is the best among those catchers who have challenged at least 20 times. Kelly also has not cost the Cubs their final challenge, unlike his catcher friends Miguel Amaya (65.7% overturn rate in 35 challenges, but lose 4 final challenges) and Moises Ballesteros (who was nails in spring training but has challenged 3 times so far as a catcher and only got one of them right). So the Kelly rate has been noticeably helpful for the Cubs pitchers who need every assist they can get while they’re still in their batting practice mode.

Funny enough, Michael Conforto and Kelly have each challenged once as a batter and gotten it right. Of the rest, the best challenger while at bat is Seiya Suzuki, who has challenged 8 times and gotten 5 right, and I’m guessing he loves this now to mitigate some of the crappy zones called against him. On the other end, Dansby Swanson has challenged thrice and gotten none of them right, so maybe don’t challenge and just assume you should swing at anything close? (It’s a really small sample, thinking they’ll figure it out, but it’s fun to ponder how they adjust strategy…)

There are other fun items, like the umpire scorecards and who lost their challenges the fastest in the game, but I imagine that for this to be meaningful, we’ll have to come back and see the data at the end of not just this season, but maybe next season as well. In the meantime, it’s kind of hilarious to see CB Bucknor’s 77.8% overturn rate on challenges (I guess those challenges only came in two games, and I’m pretty sure he’s had home plate outside just two games, but maybe that gave him a good enough ego check to tighten up his zone?).

170 COMMENTS

  15. What baffles me about the prolonged, team-wide (except you, PCA) funk is that the hitters profile pretty differently. When they had a bunch of 3TO guys in 2018-19, it made sense they’d be boom-and-bust.

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  23. Also, Alex Cohen absolutely sucks ass. He actively makes the broadcast worse any time he interacts with anyone. It’s like watching a terrible date.

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  24. andcounting:
    Also, Alex Cohen absolutely sucks ass. He actively makes the broadcast worse any time he interacts with anyone. It’s like watching a terrible date.

    My natural contrarian-ness has warmed me considerably to Zaidman, I feel confident that it will never happen with Alex (dying laughing)

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  26. berselius,

    Even though it’s morally wrong of you to warm to Zaidman (spits) (dying laughing) at least the people in the booth with him appear to like him. At least once a game Cohen causes JD to stagger verbally out of sheer frustration. (dying laughing)

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  28. andcounting:
    berselius,

    Even though it’s morally wrong of you to warm to Zaidman (spits) (dying laughing) at least the people in the booth with him appear to like him. At least once a game Cohen causes JD to stagger verbally out of sheer frustration. (dying laughing)

    Every booth shot looks like a hostage situation (dying laughing)

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  39. Goddamn, USMNT came out with their hair on fire, this might be the best half of football I’ve ever seen them play.

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  43. (dying laughing), one more goal under the wire. Even in playing it safe mode without Pulisic they looked better than I’m used to seeing

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  47. dmick89:
    Did Misiorowski just pitch the best game in mlb history?

    Not quite. He got to a game score of 100, which is pretty rare. The top three I’m aware of are the Wood game (105), Scherzer’s 17K no-hitter (104), and Kershaw’s 15K no-hitter (102). I think Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, and Matt Cain each had a 101.

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  49. Rice Cube:
    Perkins,

    Kind of amazing the other 20K games aren’t up there

    Clemens was the only other to throw a shutout (his second 20K game), but he gave up 5 hits in that one. Losing two points for each hit and four for each run adds up.

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  52. Yeah Cain and Koufax got 14Ks, and Nolan Ryan had a 16K 1-hitter that was also good for a 101. Brandon Morrow had a 100 game score with Toronto when he struck out 17 and lost a no-hitter on the 27th out.

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  53. I don’t think I’ve actually watched a game where Thornton pitched, is he secretly Jordan Wicks’s right handed mirror twin brother

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  89. Rough one today

    Daily Walkoff
    Cubs #653
    “Top Tier Basemen”

    🟡🟡⚪️🟡⚫️
    🟡🟡🟡🟢
    🟢🟢🟢🟢🚀

    dailywalkoff.com

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  106. I’d love to see a replay of the pickoff because it looked like the first baseman was far enough away from the base that they could have called a balk.

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  108. andcounting,

    It’s that tricky shit where the first baseman steps away from the bag to make it look like the throw’s not coming then they throw it to him away from the bag basically right at the runner. I’ve seen it called a balk a couple times, but they obviously weren’t being sticklers about it this time.

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  113. What happened to Pat Hughes? He was definitely calling the game earlier, but now it’s ZZ bottom in the ninth

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  160. Quinn Priester —–> out for the season

    I don’t think he’s pitched this year anyway, but I’m sure the Brewers are due to call up a guy who will make the ASG after seven starts or something

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  163. berselius:
    Quinn Priester —–> out for the season

    I don’t think he’s pitched this year anyway, but I’m sure the Brewers are due to call up a guy who will make the ASG after seven starts or something

    I’d expected that org to fall off after losing Stearns and Counsell but seems like their real advantage may have always been their pitching lab.

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  167. Hmmm, need to find a source for this chunk of proposal

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