SAN FRANCISCO — No major-league catcher is better at framing pitches and coaxing borderline strike calls than Patrick Bailey.
The Giants’ switch-hitting catcher leads his cohort by such a wide margin in framing metrics that he is all but assured his second consecutive National League Gold Glove Award. Bailey is so deft at presenting pitches to umpires and pulling them back into the strike zone that his 25 Catcher Framing Runs are nearly twice as many as any other major league receiver.
Almost entirely as a result, in terms of Statcast’s Fielding Run Value, Bailey (31) ranks as the most valuable defensive player at any position, well ahead of Boston Red Sox center fielder Ceddane Rafaela (22).
Bailey has turned pitch framing into its own art form. It’s the reason he’s viewed as a valuable major leaguer, even though the .222 hitter has been one of the least productive offensive players in the league this season.
So you might imagine what Bailey thinks of the automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system that Major League Baseball’s competition committee approved on Tuesday for the 2026 season.
“I think it’s a bummer for catchers across the league,” Bailey said. “But I don’t think it’s going to take away the value of framing. You still have to get calls and keep strikes (as) strikes. At the end of the day, I still think it’s going to be really valuable to know the zone.”
For Bailey and other pitch-framing savants, the saving grace is that MLB isn’t going full robot. Rather than use high-speed cameras to automate all balls and strikes, which was among the systems tested at the Triple A level when ABS experimentation began in 2022, the league will implement the challenge-based system it used in selected spring training ballparks earlier this year.
Teams will receive two challenges per game. Following a pitch, a challenge can be implemented by the catcher, batter or pitcher involved in the play. They must immediately signify their intent by tapping the top of their head. Successful challenges will be replenished. For extra-inning games, teams that have exhausted their challenges will receive an extra one per inning.
In the spring, Bailey viewed the ABS challenge system as an existential threat as the league rolled it out. He has a more balanced view of it now.
“I don’t think it’s going to change the game as much as I originally thought it would,” Bailey said. “I think it’s just going to take away the really big misses.”
Several major league managers agree with Bailey: a reviewable strike zone might diminish the impact of pitch framing, but only to a degree. The new system will enhance the value of level-headed players who have a feel for the zone and deploy challenges efficiently. And if players have the power to correct the most egregious calls, then it’ll make for a better game.
“I loved it in spring training,” Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Not all the players, but most of the players, if you asked them, they really liked it too. It keeps everybody accountable. It keeps everybody on their toes. I do like the added challenge during extra innings. I thought the umpires were really locked in during spring training. Hitters were really locked in during spring training. I thought it was great.”
Said Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts: “I think it helps raise the level of consistency for umpires. And that’s a good thing. … It’s not a knock on umpires. I think it’s a good thing for everyone if something elevates the level of performance.”
The Texas Rangers were among the teams that had ABS cameras installed in their spring training ballpark and used the experimental system in exhibition games. It only took a handful of them for manager Bruce Bochy to get on board with it.
“I thought it went well,” Bochy said. “It kept the game moving. It was only about five seconds to take a look at it. I think it’s about getting it right, and it’s gonna take some complaining out. … I think it’s a great system. We’re all human, we’re all gonna miss calls. I can tell you, if (the umpires) make a call that could maybe sway a game, they feel terrible too.
“If you use up your two challenges and get them wrong, well … that’s on you.”
Bochy, a former catcher, surmised that backstops would be most successful at challenging “because the pitchers, they all think they’re strikes, and the hitters all think they’re balls.” That’s exactly what the data shows from the league’s 288-game experiment in the spring. MLB said in a news release that calls were overturned 52.2 percent of the time; catchers had a 56 percent success rate, compared to 50 percent for hitters and 41 percent for pitchers.
Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, another former catcher, said that the rule change is bound to have unintended consequences and that every team will have to study its potential effects while tailoring policies for who is allowed to challenge or whether they are reserved for specific situations.
“If you look back, all the new rules and new additions and changes, I see them all as positives,” Hinch said. “I think this is going to be another one. … The art of catching, the catcher framing, the catcher’s impact on the game, I think, is going to remain an integral part of the strike-zone control. But now there’s an opportunity for hitters and pitchers and catchers to (challenge) right or wrong.
“We’re all going to see the sport a little differently. I don’t think that we all know exactly how it’s going to impact the game, but it’s not going to fundamentally change the catcher’s role in presenting a good target.”
Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt joked that he would’ve welcomed ABS challenges during his catching career “because I couldn’t receive worth crap.”
“You can like it, dislike it, it doesn’t matter — it’s coming,” Vogt said. “We’ll figure out what all that entails and how we’re gonna implement that into our strategy or how we’re gonna police it, but it’s coming and we’ve got six months to figure it out.”
St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar, who was among the players most often impacted by balls called strikes last season, said he might make different swing decisions knowing he has a challenge in his back pocket.
“With two strikes, I think the majority of hitters expand because we’re worried about striking out, but you also don’t necessarily want the call to be in the umpire’s hands,” Nootbaar said. “So now you can trust your eyes, and if it doesn’t go your way, then you at least have something to challenge. I still think there’s a place for umpires in this game. But this could have a ripple effect, where, if you’re feeling good as a hitter, and then you get a challenge go your way, all of a sudden something big can happen. I’m excited for it.”
Knowing the zone will become the new soft skill, especially because the zone’s vertical limits will be different for each hitter. The ABS zone for each player is based on measurements taken by one independent party and verified by another; the top of the zone is defined as 53.5 percent of a player’s height and the bottom of the zone is 27 percent of their height. The zone is 17 inches wide — the width of home plate — and pitch location is measured at the midpoint between the front and back of the plate. Any part of the ball only needs to tick the edge of the zone to be a strike.
The league changed the height criteria several times while experimenting in Triple-A games over the past three years.
“I’ve played with it since the first day they implemented it in 2022 and it’s gotten pretty seamless,” said Giants right-hander Tristan Beck, who has pitched for the club’s Triple-A affiliate in Sacramento in each of the past three seasons. “The game flows well. They’re quick about it. At least in Triple A, they put it on the board and show where the pitch is.
“But year over year, we saw the zone shrink. They continued to chop the top off, raise the bottom, lift up the edges. You’d get used to that really tight zone at Triple A, especially in the days when it was 100 percent ABS. Then you come up here and get a missed call or get a strike at the top of the zone. That’s been the adjustment the last couple years, so I’ll be interested to see how it looks here.”
Especially when it comes to legislating who gets to challenge and when — an exercise that is sure to be influenced by big league egos.
“Two challenges isn’t a lot,” Beck said. “We’d see teams run out of them pretty much every day at Triple A. I’ve seen the first pitch of the game challenged multiple times.”
Two seasons ago, when former Giants relief pitcher John Brebbia made a rehab appearance for Sacramento, he burned both his team’s challenges in the first inning. It was easy to find the humor in it during a minor league game. In the big leagues, the stakes are a little higher.
“You’re gonna have some guys where you tell them, ‘If you miss today, you’re not gonna get it tomorrow,’” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “And other guys will be really good at it. Next spring, we’ll feel that one out and see who is and who isn’t.”
Melvin almost certainly will give his catcher a perpetual green light. Bailey has even mused about intentionally “un-framing” pitches on occasion to trick a hitter into burning a challenge. When you are the league’s best pitch framer, you have a pretty good idea at how to create an edge.
“We all know what Patty does,” Beck said. “He’s the best I’ve ever seen and I don’t think that’s going to go away.”
“He’s the best,” Melvin said. “He’s as good as it gets. And he understands it, too. He knows what his pitchers can do and where he needs to go to get these strikes. It makes a big impact. He’s a pretty cerebral player on top of it.”
So all things considered, is Bailey cool with the ABS challenge system?
“I mean, I don’t know if it matters if we’re cool with it,” Bailey said.
The players who serve on the competition committee were not unanimous in their approval, but that hardly mattered. There are just four players on the 11-person committee.
“Whether you were in favor of it or opposed, it was coming anyway,” Arizona Diamondbacks right-hander Zac Gallen said. “We had two-thirds of the clubhouse in favor of it. I do like the ability to be able to challenge some pitches in big spots. Maybe it’s a 3-2 pitch, bases loaded and it’s a strike, it’s called a ball, you’re out of the inning as opposed to giving up a run. So we’ll see how it goes.”
The Athletic’s Katie Woo, Fabian Ardaya, Cody Stavenhagen, Matt Gelb, C. Trent Rosecrans, Mitch Bannon and Chris Kirschner contributed to this story
(Photo of Patrick Bailey: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
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