Giants catcher Patrick Bailey has used ABS in unexpected ways, such as appealing a call four pitches into Thursday’s game to get a strike for starter Logan Webb.
Ross D. Franklin/AP
Baseball’s new ABS system has everyone watching games in a different light. The umpires are under special scrutiny, the players rise and fall with their strategic decisions, and the fans have a daily catalyst for conversation.
Consider the case of the most interesting man in baseball, and by that we mean San Francisco Giants catcher Patrick Bailey. A notoriously weak hitter, he has developed a knack for dramatic home runs. But he also employs the art of pitch framing better than anyone else. And he has his own ideas about ABS.
Even before the season started, most everyone agreed that with just two challenges allowed per team, it would be wise to save them for desperate situations in the late innings. And it has played out that way, for the most part. But there have been times when Bailey needed a strike so badly for an unraveling struggling pitcher, he called for an early-inning challenge — not always with success.
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It seemed almost comical Thursday afternoon when Bailey tapped his helmet in the top of the first with the Dodgers’ No. 1 hitter, Freddie Freeman, at the plate. “Really?” broadcaster Duane Kuiper asked on air. Plate umpire “Rob Drake must be going, ‘Four pitches into the game, and you’re challenging?’”
Bailey got the ball-becomes-a-strike reversal he was looking for: The pitch landed on the upper outside corner of the ABS strike zone. But there was more than mere risk. Hitters have been laying off that pitch this season, and the umpires have generally agreed, but it can be a strike within the ABS zone.
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Another notable development during the Dodgers series came immediately after a second-inning pitch that was not challenged: an ABS box appeared on the left side of the television viewer’s screen, showing where it officially landed. Disregard the players involved; this is a much larger issue that could get dangerously out of hand.
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There were three such instances in Wednesday night’s game and another one on Thursday, the result of NBC Sports Bay Area producer Jeff Kuiper and director Jim Lynch fooling around with a new toy. If the ABS verdict is available on every pitch, why not let the viewers in on it?
“Call it a work in progress,” Jeff Kuiper said in an email exchange. “We’re navigating these new ABS resources and trying to figure out how and when to use them. You need a capable Technical Director to drop it down on time, and we won’t always have that on the road. I’m not even sure we’ll keep doing it. Maybe we use it less frequently and only if announcers reference it to make a point.”
Jeff Kuiper and Lynch are well aware of the pitfalls, including:
• Other broadcast crews won’t be so discerning, and they’d better be careful. You might show a dozen non-challenge ABS replays that favor the home team — such as “we got robbed right there” — but nothing of the sort for the opposition.
• Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow don’t want any part of seeing that new box after every pitch. They are storytellers, with threads in progress. Now here comes ABS without a filter, distracting from the action at hand. Moreover, is that really what you want at home? Remember that the minor leagues have experimented with ABS on every pitch — umpires make no calls at all — and the overwhelming majority of players say they don’t like it. Drains the energy and suspense right out of the game.
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Further dots and thoughts
• Two years ago, when the sweeper suddenly became a pitch of interest, Krukow said he would “never” say that word on the air, because those pitches are breaking balls — not “sweeping” flatly across the plate. A lot of former big-league pitchers agreed with him, but there was no stopping the torrent of StatCast interpretation and announcers buying right into it.
“In most instances, if you watch TV long enough, they’re gonna call every damn thing a sweeper,” Krukow said during a Friday phone call. “But I talked to our pitching coaches about it, and they told me it’s the only way some guys can throw a swing-and-miss breaking ball. Never mind that you’re gonna blow your arm up if you throw it incorrectly. It’s being taught.
“I don’t understand it, but I came back home and thought, they’re throwing a pitch that’s kind of halfway between the slider and the curveball — and hell, you might not get to the big leagues if you don’t have it. They’ve put a name on it, so now I’m addressing it.”
• Giants outfielder Drew Gilbert made three mistakes against the Dodgers on Wednesday: Two bad throws, each of which hurt the club, and then a very animated attempt to state his case when coach Shane Robinson pulled him aside in the dugout. Wrong, kid. You had no case. Best to just nod your head and take it.
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• Madison Bumgarner would have been even more effective if he had ABS umpiring. He loved to throw his lefty “backdoor” sliders to right-handed hitters, but they came from way off the plate and wouldn’t be called strikes if they barely ticked the outside edge of the zone. Those pitches would be strikes now, and basically unhittable.
• Manager Tony Vitello felt very much alone at the start of the season, subject to ridicule from skeptics in the baseball community and looking at a long road toward respect. How quickly that changed: The Giants took two games from the Dodgers, Vitello looks like he can handle the job, and the most suffocating brand of scrutiny is going down in New York (Mets lost 12 in a row), Philadelphia (nine straight losses heading into the weekend) and Boston (last place in the AL East). San Francisco is a relative paradise in comparison.
• Two quotes that made sense at the onset of the season, and especially now: Giants chairman Greg Johnson saying, “It’s good for all of us that the Dodgers have the star power to draw people to baseball — I’ll take the high road and say it’s good for the game.” And then the Padres’ Manny Machado: “I f—ing love it. I think every team should be (spending lavishly). I hope all 30 teams can learn from that.”
• Jonathan Kuminga’s game is blossoming in Atlanta. Coming off the bench and playing the key fourth-quarter minutes, he was a factor across the board — scoring, rebounding, blocked shots, steals — as the Hawks evened their first-round series with the Knicks 1-1 at Madison Square Garden and then took Game 3 at home. In the opinion of Prime Video analyst and former NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy, “He’s been so good.”
• Brandin Podziemski has made it clear he wants to stay with the Warriors, no matter what comes down in the offseason, and he deserves every plaudit coming his way. That wasn’t the consensus in this space in the early season, when one beer-sodden fellow was heard to say, “Who wears his hair like that? He’s got a spaceship on his head, and worse yet, it bounces up and down off the back of his neck. Come on, dude.”
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We’re not hearing any such thing now — nothing but rave reviews. The man plays as hard as anyone in the league, taking ferocious punishment without complaint, and he played all 82 games this season. He has a nice outside shot, a feathery floater and the desire to drive to the basket on anybody. Add to that a nutty kind of identity. Never turn away from a resource like that.
Bruce Jenkins writes the 3-Dot Lounge for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jenksurf@gmail.com; Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1