New MLB technology could take away SF Giants catcher's secret advantage

Baseball purists may want to cover their eyes, but the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS) will be used during spring training games this year. This could mean that the SF Giants will lose their secret advantage with catcher Patrick Bailey's expert framing ability.

ABS has been used in the minor leagues for several years now, and this is the first time it is going to be tried out at the big league level albeit in exhibition games that do not count. 60 percent of spring training games will use ABS, so there will be a mix of ABS and the traditional way.

This does not mean there will be games without an umpire behind home plate, though. The system being used is something of a compromise where an umpire will still be calling balls and strikes behind the plate, but players, meaning the batter, pitcher, or the catcher, will have the ability to challenge calls with each team getting two challenges per game. A challenge will trigger the Hawk-Eye technology that is used in professional tennis which will determine whether the pitch was actually a strike or not.

New MLB technology could be bad news for SF Giants and Patrick Bailey

It will be interesting to see how this system works in exhibition games. To be clear, there are no plans to implement this system in the regular season in 2025 so any changes to how balls and strikes are called in actual games that count is probably at least a year or two away at the earliest.

Nonetheless, if this system does get implemented at the big league level, it could have a negative impact on the Giants because of how good Bailey is at framing pitches and stealing strikes that are probably out of the strike zone.

Bailey just has two seasons under his belt, but he already has a Gold Glove to show for it. Advanced stats also rank him as the best pitch framer in all of baseball. There is a great 16-minute video on YouTube dedicated to Bailey stealing strikes that showcases how good he is at setting up behind the plate and catching pitches in a way that fools the umpire into thinking it is a strike.

This ABS system they are trying out is good for the Giants because it does not completely get rid of the art of pitch-framing like a fully automatic system with no umpire behind the dish would. Yet, with hitters being able to challenge perhaps they could get back a few strikes that Bailey would have been able to steal from them in the past.

There could be an added benefit though with catchers being able to issue challenges. Bailey clearly knows the strike-zone as good as any catcher in the game, so if he is able to issue challenges behind the plate perhaps he can get some calls that otherwise would have been balls if the umpire has a tight strike-zone.

Giants manager, and former catcher, Bob Melvin was recently asked about the system and said that when he first heard about ABS he thought it meant that, "Framers are gonna be put out to pasture." But he also acknowledged he is not very familiar with the system so he will reserve judgment until he has seen it in action.

It will be interesting to see how this new technology plays out with major-league players. We will just have to wait and see if this ends up becoming the way of doing things at the big league level in the near future. If it does, it may have a slight negative impact on the Giants but it is far better than a fully automatic system which would really eliminate framing from the game and take away Bailey's secret advantage.