Padres' Xander Bogaerts gets burned by glaring loophole in MLB’s new ABS challenge system

MLB introduced the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system to keep missed calls from hijacking at-bats. On July 28, the league found a way to let a missed call hijack Xander Bogaerts’ at-bat anyway. It wasn’t the technology that failed the Padres. Instead, it was the rule wrapped around the technology that did.

During the fourth inning of San Diego’s eventual 8-7 walk-off win over the Rockies, Michael Lorenzen threw Bogaerts a 1-0 sinker that home-plate umpire Jeremie Rehak called a strike. It wasn’t even close. Umpire Auditor measured the pitch at 4.11 inches below the zone, making it the worst missed call of the day.

Bogaerts knew it. The Padres dugout knew it, and by the reactions, pretty much everyone knew.

As the full sequence shared by Foul Territory shows, Bogaerts promptly tapped his helmet to challenge the call. Rehak refused to grant the challenge because he believed the loud reaction in the dugout had influenced Bogaerts.

Padres star Xander Bogaerts exposes a major flaw in MLB’s ABS challenge system

Under MLB’s ABS rules, only the batter, pitcher or catcher can challenge a ball-strike call. The player must signal almost immediately, roughly within two seconds, and cannot receive help from the dugout or another player. An umpire can deny the request if he believes outside assistance influenced the decision.

We get the intent. MLB doesn’t want teams studying delayed data and feeding answers to the players. But this wasn’t an elaborate scheme. The Padres saw an obvious ball called a strike and reacted like a normal baseball dugout would. They yelled. Honestly, the call was pretty egregious. 

And that’s what dugouts do. They’ve been yelling about balls and strikes since long before anyone put cameras around the stadium and slapped an ABS logo on the scoreboard.

Bogaerts said he made the decision himself and didn’t look toward the bench. Craig Stammen also argued that Bogaerts’ immediate helmet tap made the timing clear. Rehak was left to make a split-second judgment about what was happening inside Bogaerts’ head.

So MLB’s solution to subjective umpiring was to give an umpire another subjective decision. As if there isn’t already enough of that in the sport. The pitch-tracking system existed to settle the only question that mattered: Was Lorenzen’s sinker a ball or a strike? Instead of letting the system answer that question, the rule allowed Rehak to decide whether Bogaerts truly believed the pitch was low or merely borrowed that belief from his teammates.

We don’t need umpires moonlighting as mind readers. We need them to accept a timely challenge and let the technology do its job.

Craig Stammen was right to defend Xander Bogaerts

The situation kept boiling after Rehak denied the challenge. Bogaerts grounded into a forceout, Rockies second baseman Edouard Julien mishandled the transfer on a potential double play, and Stammen stepped onto the field while trying to preserve the Padres’ chance at a review.

Infield instructor Ryan Goins was ejected from the dugout. Stammen and Rehak then engaged in the night’s main event, an animated confrontation that ended with Stammen receiving his fourth ejection of the season.

We’ve seen Stammen have a couple of “empty theatre" managerial ejections. This wasn’t one of those. Stammen had every reason to defend Bogaerts. He was asking Rehak to recognize the challenge Bogaerts had already made. They weren’t trying to exploit ABS.

Stammen later acknowledged that everyone is still adjusting to the new system. That’s the high road. Players, coaches and umpires are learning where its boundaries sit. But after more than 100 games, the league should also recognize when one of those boundaries makes no sense.

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