Jazz Chisholm Is So Bad At ABS Challenges

It is of course nice to get the calls correct, but baseball is an entertainment product foremost, and a most delightful side effect of the new automated ball-strike challenge system is the few seconds of drama between a challenge and its resolution. Who will be vindicated? Who will be shown up? Who will have to wear the mark of shame? Will umpires be able to restrain themselves from muttering, "Not so easy, is it?"

On Sunday, Seattle's Rob Refsnyder challenged a ninth-inning, strike-three call. He was vindicated, and a few pitches later hit what would prove the game-winning home run. Perhaps for some this is the apex of the system as it is meant to operate. For those of us with more whimsy in our hearts, said apex came on Friday, when Yankees 2B Jazz Chisholm tapped his helmet and challenged a strike call right down the pipe.

That was a meatball. A big, fat, juicy meatball, dripping with grease, sitting right on the middle of the plate and begging to be deformed by a bat. Home plate ump Adam Beck surely had to fight back a smile; the Houston crowd murmured in delight when the ABS graphic showed the strikingest strike that ever struck. "That one wasn't real close," deadpanned Yankees skipper Aaron Boone.

Some trendlines have emerged over the first month of ABS. Catchers are on the whole better at challenges than pitchers, and pitchers are better than batters. And all of the other batters are better at challenges than Jazz Chisholm.

On Sunday, Chisholm, seemingly not chagrined in the least by what happened two days earlier, extended his "lead" by unsuccessfully challenging another called strike. If it was a little closer this time, it was still entirely within the strike zone.

"Damn," Chisholm mouthed. He is now 1-for-7 on the season. No hitter in MLB has more unsuccessful challenges, and no hitter has a worse success rate than Chisholm's 14 percent.

The Yankees have an informal system in place to punish bad challenges, with players paying $500 into the kitty for each one. Those self-imposed fines paint a pretty good picture of how egregious Chisholm's Friday challenge was. Only one other player has had to pay up all year—the kangaroo court is lenient—but Chisholm was charged double. "I gotta do something for the team worth at least $1,000 after that," he said.

At what point do the Yankees just tell Chisholm he's not allowed to challenge anymore? Boone already said he'd had a "firm" conversation with shortstop Jose Caballero, a particularly aggressive ABS challenger (he's 5-for-10). Asked about Chisholm, Boone only said it's "possible" that individual players could have their ABS privileges revoked.

I think that, once teams have a few years of data on this, challenging will be refined to a science, and we'll look back on these Wild West days with the same amusement that greets lineup constructions of yore. Until that day, however, I know an umpire's self-confidence loves to see Jazz Chisholm stepping to the plate.