{"id":262354,"date":"2026-04-23T06:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/262354\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T06:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:34:07","slug":"rangers-evan-carter-learns-hard-lesson-about-abs-challenge-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/262354\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers’ Evan Carter learns hard lesson about ABS challenge system"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON \u2014\u00a0Rangers<\/a> manager Skip Schumaker has maintained that, as it pertains to the automatic balls and strikes challenge system, his team will continue to learn how it works best as the rest of baseball does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Consider Wednesday night another lesson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Center fielder Evan Carter became the first Rangers player to have their challenge request denied in the seventh inning of Wednesday\u2019s 8-4 loss<\/a>. Carter, who\u2019d successfully challenged a called strike one from home plate umpire Shane Livensparger earlier in the same at-bat, worked a full count vs. Pirates right-handed pitcher Braxton Ashcroft. He took what he believed was ball four on a sinker well outside the zone, and as he exited the batter\u2019s box and turned toward first base,\u00a0Livensparger called strike three.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old turned back and tapped the top of his helmet to trigger a challenge. Livensparger shook his head, because as Carter relayed postgame, \u201cI left the batter\u2019s box, looked away and I couldn\u2019t come back and challenge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Evan saw it being a ball, was walking toward first base, maybe surprised it was called for a strike because he knew it was a ball, and was maybe a little too late after kind of looking toward our direction \u201d Schumaker said. \u201cI kind of honestly understand both sides of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

League rules state that a player has \u201croughly\u2019 two seconds to challenge a pitch and that batters cannot look toward their own dugout before they do so in an effort to curb assistance from coaches or teammates. Livensparger viewed Carter\u2019s movement as a look toward the Rangers dugout. Carter called it \u201cmuscle memory\u201d in the way that he turned and reacted to ball four.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s just really up to the umpire\u2019s discretion in the moment,\u201d Carter said. \u201cAt the end of the day, I don\u2019t make the rules, and I don\u2019t enforce them either. On another day, maybe he says sure, maybe another guy says sure, I don\u2019t know, but in the moment he said, \u2018You can\u2019t do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON \u2014\u00a0Rangers manager Skip Schumaker has maintained that, as it pertains to the automatic balls and strikes challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,1638,89415,87907,89904,89898],"class_list":["post-262354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-brief","tag-tp-globe-life-field","tag-tp-arlington","tag-tp-evan-carter","tag-tp-skip-schumaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}