Twins, now dealing with human umpires, ponder spring with reviewed balls and strikes

ST. LOUIS - He hasn’t even pitched yet this season, but Chris Paddack says he’s already earned a memorable distinction in 2025.

“I’m the guy who challenged a pitch a foot and a half from the strike zone,” the righthander said with a laugh. “[Catcher Ryan] Jeffers gave me a hard time about it.”

In his defense, Paddack said, he changed his target just before releasing the ball, so his perception of the strike zone was off-kilter.

“The [batter] squared around” as if to bunt, Paddack explained. “We were trying to go away with the pitch, but when I see guys square around, I usually change that and aim inside because it’s a harder pitch to bunt. So now Jeffers has to reach, and what my eyes saw was, he was reaching because I crossed him up. I figured it went over the plate, so I challenged. And the replay …” Paddack grimaced as he held his hands 18 inches apart. “Oops.”

Hey, the point of using the automated balls and strikes (ABS) system this spring was to let the players learn how it works. Some just learned harder lessons, though Paddack said he likes the system and enjoys how much fans seemed to embrace it.

But after five weeks of living with the new rule — only pitchers, catchers and batters can challenge an umpire’s call, they must do it instantly, and once they are wrong twice, they can challenge no more — the Twins are divided over whether MLB should adopt the rule for regular season games.

“I like it. Umpires’ jobs are really hard, and it’s a way to eliminate the big miss, the ones where everyone in the stadium can see the call was wrong,” said Jeffers, who challenged more than a dozen pitches during the spring and was incorrect only twice. “Like when there is obvious pass interference in football that changes a big play but the referees don’t call it — this is a way to get the big calls right.”

His fellow catcher, however, hopes that balls and strikes remain the responsibility of umpires, as they have been since organized baseball began a century and a half ago.

“That’s my job, to frame pitches and help get strikes,” said Christian Vázquez. “No, I don’t want it. That’s my living, that’s my money they’re after. They pay me to get calls.”

Vázquez said he missed “like four pitches, not very good,” because he had a hard time adjusting to a standardized strike zone. “Especially pitches up in the zone,” he said. “Those pitches, when they’re starting to move down, it looks like they’re strikes. I [challenged] one that was 2 inches high.”

Trouble is, the exact same pitch may be a strike to a different, taller hitter, and several players said they didn’t have faith that the zone is adjusted accurately.

“Basically, the top of the zone is continuously moving,” said Simeon Woods Richardson, who gained experience with ABS calls in the minor leagues, where the system has been in use for two seasons. “The [Aaron] Judge zone is different from the [Jose] Altuve zone, and [batters] are moving around. It’s not as exact as they make it seem.”

That’s Jhoan Duran’s opinion, too. He never challenged a pitch, but Vazquez did once when he was pitching. A called strike three was ruled a ball because the ABS replay judged the pitch “like 0.1 inch too high,” Duran said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t like it. You’re taking away the catcher’s [framing] talent.”

Actually, the system revealed catchers’ talent for knowing the strike zone. According to MLB, the pitching team got balls turned into strikes 54.4% of the time they challenged this spring, and catchers were successful far more often (56%) than pitchers (41%). Batters got strikes overturned on exactly half of their challenges.

“I honestly think it adds another skill to a catcher’s job, knowing the zone. On challenges I was absolutely confident in, I didn’t miss a single time,” Jeffers said. “I don’t think it eliminates pitch-framing. I used to think so, but I don’t anymore. Two challenges, that drastically limits how much you can use it.”

Still, Jeffers said, he agrees that the pitch-tracking radar isn’t as foolproof as MLB would have you believe. “They did a good job of the graphics part on the scoreboard because it looks so authoritative, like it’s correct down to the millimeter,” he said. “But there 100 percent is some error in the system.”

That’s why he proposes a tweak to the system: widening the border of the strike zone to a quarter-inch or three-eighths of an inch.

“Let’s say if you challenge a pitch and the edge of the ball is inside that line, the umpire’s call stands, whichever way he called it,” Jeffers said, particularly on pitches over the plate but very close to the top or bottom of the strike zone. “I just don’t believe the zone is as perfect as they want you to believe, so let’s create a buffer. Let’s trust the umpires on the incredibly close ones, and fix the big misses.”