Nine games into April, it's all about the ABS challenges

Last night, after being visited by the Babadook Bullpen - aka Jake Bird - the Yankees faced baseball's new dark reality: 

Don't go into the 9th without an ABS challenge in your pocket. 

If you do, you're like a football team in a two-minute drill without any timeouts. 

Last night, having squandered their two challenges early on, the '25/'26 Yanks agonized as pitch after pitch fluttered around the plate like an Iranian drone, to be called a strike.  

The victim was J. C, Escara - (who, with the Martian in Scranton, turned out to be our last lefty batter.) Poor guy had to watch as the home plate ump, wanting to put this rain-delayed game into the books, expanded the strike zone like a peacock's plumage.  

I'm not blaming Boone, or the brain trust, or anybody, for this new reality, which has hit baseball like a blown-out upstream dam. The ABS system is here to stay, and the Death Barge better figure it out - like, now - because it's showing the world, dramatically, who owns the strike zone, and who has not a clue.  

The Yankees have been one of MLB's most aggressive teams in tapping their heads and challenging calls. They rank 10th in overall success, according to ESPN's stat tracker which is the most interesting new set of baseball stats since we asked, WAR, what is you go for? 

Some takeaways from the tracker:

Austin Wells ranks 13th among catchers, with a 71 percent success rate. He is 5 for 7. It looks as though catchers will be the most vigorous - and critical - challengers. Their ABS success - or lack of it - will compete with the art of pitch framing and release time to second base. Right now, Dillon Dingler of the Tigers has the best ABS record, by far, among catchers; he's 7 for 7. If this continues, you'll hear his name when Golden Gloves are announced.

Yankee pitchers are not jumping into this pond. Max Fried is the only one to register a challenge and succeed. He's 1 for 1. Donno what to make of this. You wanna think that, when they return, cagy vets Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon would exploit this system. In fact, it could be the opposite: Baseball will have had two months to learn the new reality. For ABS, Cole and Rodon will be wild-eyed rookies. Weird, eh?

Trent Grisham and Jose Caballero are the most frequent Yankee batters, thus far. Both are 2 for 3 in challenges. Obviously, this is too small a sample size to draw conclusions, but when this system was implemented, everybody thought it would help Aaron Judge, over everybody else. In SF, he successfully overturned a strike call, then hit a towering HR. Since then, crickets. I gotta believe everything will revolve around the Captain. Whatever he does, the team will follow. He will be the most influential Yankee captain in history. (But Jose Caballero, or any of the bottom three batters, should not be team leaders in ABS challenges. I mean, come on...) 

There's a trippy relationship between winning games and winning challenges. The last place Redsocks rank 23rd in ABS success, at 46 percent. But the Guardians, leaders in the AL Central, rank 30th; (being in Cleveland is challenging enough, I guess.) The NL leaders - the Marlins, Brewers and Dodgers, are all middle of the pack in ABS success. This is a massive change, and nobody has yet figured it out.  

Soon, baseball will explode with ABS analytics. I bet, as you read this, some Yankee wonk is using an entire data center, crunching the $100-per-barrel numbers. The system is already significant enough to belong in box scores (they are not currently shown.) It's a new world, a new reality. And don't get caught in the ninth without a challenge.