Wonder how the new Automated Ball-Strike System fared during Spring Training? Well, wonder no more.
According to data released Wednesday by MLB, 52.2% of ball-strike challenges this spring resulted in a successful overturn of the home-plate umpire’s original call -- up from 50.6% when the technology was used in Triple-A in 2024.
ABS was used at 13 Spring Training parks -- covering 19 home teams thanks to shared facilities -- and was employed in roughly 60% of Spring Training games in 2025 to test its suitability for the Major League level. Each team started a game with two challenges and lost them if the umpire's call was confirmed, with batters, pitchers and catchers allowed to challenge the ruling.
Here’s what to know about how things went:
? The pitching team (54.4% overturn rate) fared better than the hitting club (50.0%), with catchers succeeding at a 56% clip -- considerably higher than the 41% rate at which pitchers’ challenges were successful.
? In ABS games during Spring Training, 2.6% of called pitches were challenged. Roughly 80% of spring games using ABS saw five or fewer challenges.
? Each challenge added an average of 13.8 seconds to a game, an improvement on the 16.6-second average from Triple-A in 2024. With 4.1 challenges per Spring Training game using the ABS system, that amounts to less than an extra minute per contest. Spring games overall averaged 2 hours and 38 minutes, three minutes up from the 2023-24 average (2:35).
? Players challenged more pitches in higher-leverage counts, although challenges in those counts tended to be less successful. Just 44% of 2-2 or 3-2 pitches were overturned, compared to a 57% overturn rate on the first pitch of a plate appearance.
? While players used their challenges consistently throughout games, overturn rates declined as the game went on. In the first three innings, 60% of challenged calls were overturned, compared to 51% in the fourth through sixth, 43% in the seventh and eighth and 46% in the ninth.