Abysmal SF Giants ABS success rate reflects poorly on Tony Vitello's coaching staff

The SF Giants have gotten off to a frustrating start to the season. While most of fans’ ire should be directed at the players getting paid the most money on the team who currently look like they can’t hit, there has been another glaring weakness for the team so far.

It’s the first season of the new ABS challenge system and the Giants are one of the least successful teams when it comes to challenging balls and strikes. When they’re at the plate, they have been successful challenging 42% of the time which is below average across MLB.

When it comes to challenging while they’re in the field, they have been successful 45% of the time which is the second-worst mark in MLB ahead of only the Chicago White Sox.

SF Giants need to get better at challenging under ABS

The fact that they’ve been so bad at challenging calls while on defense is surprising. With how great catcher Patrick Bailey looked at challenging calls during spring training, it seemed like the Giants were going to have a huge advantage in the challenge department. That just has not been the case.

Bailey has won 11 challenges and lost 12 of them. Daniel Susac, before he got injured, won two challenges and lost four.

It’s a new system so a learning curve is to be expected, but the coaching staff has to be working on how to fix this. Manager Tony Vitello was hired, along with the rest of his staff, because president of baseball operations Buster Posey wanted someone who was "obsessed about the details." Well, it seems like the Giants may be overlooking this department right now.

Not a ton of games are going to be decided due to ABS alone. But successfully challenging a call at the right time can make all the difference at key points of the game. Bailey is a very good catcher and knows the strike zone well so he needs to be figuring out why his successful challenge rate is so low especially if he’s going to continue to hit so poorly. He needs to provide value somehow.

It’s far from the biggest issue the Giants currently have, but it’s noteworthy. The details matter and if the Giants are going to go beyond the .500 baseball they’ve been known for since 2022 then maybe they should start sweating the details when it comes to ABS to try to get any advantage that they can.

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