RailRiders 2023: Robo umps, shift bans set for debuts
Mar. 31—There was a game last season, Billy McKinney remembers, where his Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators trailed by three or four runs in the ninth inning.
That's a daunting deficit with just three outs to go, and it's made a bit more challenging any time the pitcher gets closer to strike three. During this particular inning, McKinney said, three or four calls went against his club.
Luckily for the Aviators, they had some challenges on their side, too.
Last season, the Pacific Coast League transitioned to the automated ball-strike system — more colloquially, robo umps. Some games, balls and strikes were called entirely by a computer. Others, the home plate umpire was in charge, but players could appeal to the system to overturn a call. That day, in the ninth inning, the Aviators still had challenges to burn.
Those calls by the ump that went against them? McKinney said they challenged them all and won them all. Strikes became balls. Pitchers counts became hitters counts.
"Actually, it changed the game," said McKinney, an outfielder who is back in a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders uniform this year. "We ended up winning the game. So, that was pretty wild."
In recent years, Major League Baseball used the minor leagues to test game-changing rules, like the pitch clock, pickoff restrictions, bigger bases and free runners in extra innings in bids to make games quicker and more action packed. This season is no different, as shift restrictions, which skipped over Triple-A and earned a big league promotion, and ABS come to all of Triple-A. Half of the RailRiders' games will be called by computers and for the other half, they'll have three challenges at their disposal.
Hitters seem to think they're the winners.
"It will be very nice to finally have the pitchers have to play by the rules and throw the ball over the plate to get a strike," RailRiders hitting coach Trevor Amicone said. "Those have been the rules for 120 years. It will be nice to finally start having those rules enforced."
Pitchers say they're still in charge.
"Hitters are not going to be happy," said Carlos Rodón, the New York Yankees' big offseason addition to their rotation.
How it works
ABS starts with a series of Hawk-Eye cameras positioned throughout a ballpark. There's a system operator in the press box. Umpires wear ear pieces to receive the calls and then they relay ball or strike. They'll also be behind the plate no matter what, with out or safe, fair or foul and some of the other finer points of supervising the game still needing a human touch.
Hitters range in sizes from 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge to 5-foot-6 José Altuve, so the size of the strike zone changes, too. The top border is 51 percent of a hitter's height, and the bottom is set at 27 percent. The width is standard: 19 inches, which means an inch off each side of the 17-inch wide home plate.
The strike zone is a two-dimensional rectangle that is lined up in the middle of the plate, 8 1/2 inches from the front and 8 1/2 inches from the back point. If any part of the ball — any fraction of the ball — nicks any part of the zone, it's a strike.
For the first half of the six-game series, it's all ABS all the time, according to Baseball America. For the final three games, teams will have three challenges at their disposal that can be used by the batter, catcher or pitcher. Win it and you keep the challenge. Lose it and you lose the challenge, too. If a challenge is used, it's almost an instantaneous verdict, unlike video replay of something in the majors.
"We try to be semi unique with how we use those challenges last year, with having our players earn them to be able to use them in the game," said Yankees hitting coordinator Joe Migliaccio. "We have them earn in practice, or if you lose it, you just don't get one for another week. We try to build that confidence of the strike zone before they even get out into the game."
Zoning in
Anthony Volpe cautions that he's not necessarily saying he thinks baseball needs to institute ABS at this moment. But when the New York Yankees rookie shortstop played with it while he was at Single-A Tampa in 2021, he loved it.
"You could trust it," said Volpe, who perhaps coincidentally, played the best stretch of baseball in his young career at that level. Over 54 games, he batted .302 with a 1.078 OPS and walked more times than he struck out (51 to 43).
He knew a strike would be a strike and a ball would be a ball no matter who was behind the plate.
"I guess for hitters, (it's) a lot tighter than you're used to, and I've been used to in years since," Volpe said. "I definitely liked it."
That seems to be the selling point for hitters. Under ABS, the zone is the same every game. No longer will they be subject to a catcher who is adept a framing pitches that are off the plate for strikes.
At the same time, pitchers will know exactly where the zone is, too, and development can be geared toward that. The Yankees already use the auto zone in many of their bullpen situations. Like Rodón said, he's sure pitchers will be able to take advantage, even with a tighter zone.
"I've thrown numerous amount of breaking balls in my career, and so have a ton of other guys in this room that clipped the bottom of the zone all the time that are called balls," Rodón said.
"Same thing when I throw fastballs up in the top of the zone. I'm notorious for doing that. It's hard for an umpire to call that and I totally understand that. I get that. Because umpiring is probably one of the hardest things to do in the world."
RailRiders outfielder Willie Calhoun noticed some of that playing in the PCL last season. Those times when pitchers miss the catcher's target by the width of the plate, but the pitch ultimately ends up in the zone? They're rarely called strikes by umpires, but ABS only cares about where the pitch ends up, so they're strikes now. Then there are those pitches Rodón mentioned: breaking balls that clip either the very bottom of very top of the zone, or high fastballs at the upper corners.
"Sometimes you're like, 'Man, is that really a strike?' " Calhoun said. "It makes you think, I've got to start covering more of the plate or whatever."
Shifting topics
It's Jake Bauers' second season as a pro and the lefty-swinging San Diego Padres prospect is tearing up the Class-A Midwest League. He's riding an 18-game hitting streak and is batting .365 as the season turns toward the middle of June. Then, one night with Bowling Green in town, he saw something different looking out from the batter's box.
It was the first time he faced a shift.
"The manager at Bowling Green, I guess just had enough and he shifted," Bauers said. "And I hit three balls hard right up the middle and it ended my hitting streak."
In the majors in 2021, Bauers was shifted in 65.2 percent of his plate appearances, with the second baseman standing in shallow left field, and the shortstop and third baseman pinched up the middle.
"I used to be able to kind of spray the ball to left when everybody was throwing the sinkers away. I was pretty good at just flicking them to left (field)," Bauers said. "But then as the ride fastball became a thing, you can't try to manipulate that ball. So the flicking it to left was no longer a thing, and then it was just all shift all the time."
Bauers, 27, re-signed with the Yankees organization over the offseason, and he's not the only lefty slugger they brought in who's seen their share of shifts. McKinney, 28, was shifted in 92.9 percent of his MLB plate appearances last season, and 74.2 percent of them in 2021. Calhoun, 28, faced them 66.1 percent of the time in 2022, and 72.9 percent in 2021.
"I've already hit a couple balls this year (in spring training) where they for sure were not hits last year, and they should have been," Bauers said. "Maybe not should have been, but they were growing up. They were hits for 20 years of me playing, and then all of a sudden, you're getting shifted every at-bat and the line drive to right field is no longer a hit. The ground ball up the middle is no longer a hit."
Bauers batted .407 (11 for 27) in spring training, Calhoun .306 (15 for 49). All three players were once top-100 prospects in baseball and all three have been productive, low-strikeout guys in the minors.
"I think we've seen in spring training, the batting average on balls in play for left-handed hitters has gone up," Amicone said. "It's definitely something that's, I think, made a bigger difference than people anticipated, which is good.
"No matter what you think about the rules, at some point, things kind of have to shift back in the favor of hitters. I think pitching has gotten so good that any changes that have been made to the game, in terms of what the on-field product looks like is simply, period, end of sentence the result of the fact that pitching is better than it's ever been, better than the inventors of the game ever anticipated it could be, and I think what you've seen in strikeouts, and miss rates, and all those things going up, is a result of that and nothing more."
Perhaps a shift is coming.
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