This year, Major League Baseball is rolling out the automated ball-strike challenge system (ABS) in regular-season games. But during its trial run in Cactus League exhibitions, the Los Angeles Dodgers have struggled badly when trying to challenge pitches.

They have won only 5 of their 27 calls so far. Now, with opening day around the corner, manager Dave Roberts was asked about the root cause of such struggles.

“I honestly don’t know the answer right now,” Roberts said, while also trying to defend his team, terming most of the failed challenges as “borderline.”

He emphasized how they are just fine calibration issues and not gross errors.

“The idea of the strike zone, individually and collectively, just hasn’t been great,” he explained. 

The hitters have won only 2 out of their 11 calls. And they stand at the bottom of the table with only a 15% success rate.

The pitchers and catchers have it slightly better with 21%. Yet their 3 wins from 11 calls are lower than most.

League-wise success rates stand around 45% for the batters and 58% for the pitchers. Even the second-worst club has 12 successful calls in total.

While teams like the New York Yankees topped it with 37 overturned calls, Dave Roberts has yet to find a solution for the struggle. 

He isn’t sugarcoating the mistakes here. Some of the unsuccessful calls have been surprisingly close.

Dalton Rushing’s call earlier this week was one such example. He challenged a called ball, and the ABS showed that it missed the zone by less than 1/10th of an inch. His call was upheld. 

So far, strategy hasn’t been the priority while approaching the technology. The team wants the players to be calibrated to the exact dimensions of the strike zone. This will reduce the margin of error, eventually. 

But ‘eventually’ might not be a good option given that opening day is less than two weeks away. And all of it feels way too similar to the introduction of the pitch clock in Major League Baseball in 2023.

Pitchers struggled with in-game routines, such as managing the ball and receiving signs (using PitchCom) within the allotted 15/20-second timeframe. The new rules even led to immediate penalties. One such instance includes the first-ever tie game caused by a pitch clock violation (automatic strike) in a March 2023 matchup between the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox.

This restriction forced batters and fielders to change their fundamental approach, altering how defense was played for decades. Plus, there was an immediate reduction in game time by more than 20 minutes in the minors.

Now, the Dodgers, too, need to figure it out pretty soon. However, the only solution Dave Roberts has for now is to have a forum.

He wants to connect with the players and coaches “to talk about some things, maybe some strategies.”

The forum is scheduled for Tuesday. The Dodgers Nation would expect some solid improvement before March 26. But Roberts and his players are taking the failures quite positively. 

Dave Roberts believes the Dodgers squad will adapt to MLB’s ABS challenge system

Roberts isn’t someone to worry about the team’s potential.

“We’ve just got to get that education,” he said. “We’ll be better. I’m certain of that.”

He stands right behind his team, knowing they will excel at it just like everything else. And his team reflects the same mindset. 

“Even if we’re wrong, we need to use it just to figure out the tops and bottoms of the zone,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said earlier this spring.

The strike zone is 17 inches wide in all cases. But there are slight adjustments in the top and bottom depending on the batter’s height. 

“A lot of us are still trying to learn it … Spring training is the time to figure it out,” Freeman exclaimed.

They aim to have a better idea before the season starts. But that won’t be as easy as it sounds. Especially when catchers like Dalton Rushing get duped by the tiniest margin. But these errors won’t deter them.

As Rushing confidently said, “That’s what spring training is for.”

And that’s all that matters. While manager Dave Roberts has openly acknowledged the Los Angeles Dodgers’ early ABS numbers to be poor, they take it as a learning curve. Both Roberts and his team are certain they will improve with experience. That improvement can be another small but significant edge for the Dodgers as the season settles in.