Brewers (Harrison) vs Nationals (Griffin): 5/2/26, 3:05pm

[HarryDoyle]

I'm sure that won't come back to haunt them. Ortiz should've taken that one.

[Bulldogboy]

Ortiz is out there for defense. Let him do it.

[Nola Beery]

When's the last time we had a triple play?

 

[Nola Beery]

Just now, Nola Beery said:

When's the last time we had a triple play?

 

OK. A double play would also work

 

[RobertCrawley]

Nice win!!

[ReverendBrewmeister]

Good job by Uribe pitching around the error for the save.

[Nola Beery]

Woot!

[HarryDoyle]

That pretty much clinches the Sunday lineup for tomorrow.

[folly412]

Stack those wins!

[adambr2]

Just now, HarryDoyle said:

That pretty much clinches the Sunday lineup for tomorrow.

At least the worst we will have gone is 18-15 without Chourio and Vaughn and Quinn. I’ll take it.

[willie key]

Freaking Harrison 

[RobertCrawley]

2 minutes ago, willie key said:

Freaking Harrison 

That trade worked out well. Drohan has some upside too.

[homer]

11 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

At least the worst we will have gone is 18-15 without Chourio and Vaughn and Quinn. I’ll take it.

I think we were 8-7 when Yelich went out.

[willie key]

Being in this division is getting annoying but brewers keeling head above water so far

[adambr2]

6 minutes ago, RobertCrawley said:

That trade worked out well. Drohan has some upside too.

15 years from now we may have a thread about the Devin Williams trade tree.

[rickh150]

Glad we kept the starter healthy for a change…or so we think.

Also, why Nationals are not challenging a couple of balls in 9th are pretty bad strategy…gotta use on anything close in 9th, especially when having 2 left and base runners needed.

[yourout]

Nice win.

Now its time to get greedy.

The Abner Uribe experience is never boring.

[TURBO]

1 hour ago, HarryDoyle said:

That pretty much clinches the Sunday lineup for tomorrow.

What's the difference these days?

[sveumrules]

10 minutes ago, TURBO said:

What's the difference these days?

Five Sunday Games so far with 31 runs scored equals 6.2 R/G when they should be resting.

27 Other Six Days of the Week Games with 139 runs scored equals 5.1 R/G on secular days,

MoAr SuNdAy LiNeUpZ pLeAze

[BruisedCrew]

The Sunday lineups have been helped by Yelich and then Sanchez coming off the bench to hit 3 run HRs.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

My ABS question is: will umpires now make more of an attempt to call the zone as it is electronically?

I actually think it's a fascinating question, mainly because "yes" isn't necessarily a good answer. I don't really want everyone sort of conforming to the same zone regardless of context (for example, I've already seen a few of those calls where the pitcher misses his spot by a foot-and-half, but the ball lands in the zone, and it gets called a strike, even though it wouldn't have been in previous years--I don't like that much). Of course, "no" isn't a good answer either. We definitely want umps to consider the input the ABS is giving them. It just shouldn't be as simple as "ABS called this a strike, and I didn't, and I was wrong."

The best outcome here is challenges as a useful check on umpires. I personally don't want hitters (or catchers) just saving challenges for late in the game just to challenge borderline leverage pitches. I think, obviously, your certainty level can go down as the game progresses, but if you're 90 percent sure a pitch is wrong in the second inning, you should probably challenge it. 

The worst outcome is everyone saving challenges until late, players challenging a bunch of borderline pitches, and ABS just becoming a late-game coin flip for pitches that can fairly be called balls OR strikes.

I will say that I'm way more into this system than I was at the beginning of the year. It's interesting, adds a strategic element, and mostly has seemed less intrusive as I've managed to get used to it. 

[BruisedCrew]

Why should a pitch in the strike zone not be called a strike just because  the pitch misses the catcher’s target?

I don’t think there is any question that umpires should be trying to call pitches based on the rule book strike zone as established by ABS. 

[liveforoctober]

2 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

My ABS question is: will umpires now make more of an attempt to call the zone as it is electronically?

I actually think it's a fascinating question, mainly because "yes" isn't necessarily a good answer. I don't really want everyone sort of conforming to the same zone regardless of context (for example, I've already seen a few of those calls where the pitcher misses his spot by a foot-and-half, but the ball lands in the zone, and it gets called a strike, even though it wouldn't have been in previous years--I don't like that much). Of course, "no" isn't a good answer either. We definitely want umps to consider the input the ABS is giving them. It just shouldn't be as simple as "ABS called this a strike, and I didn't, and I was wrong."

The best outcome here is challenges as a useful check on umpires. I personally don't want hitters (or catchers) just saving challenges for late in the game just to challenge borderline leverage pitches. I think, obviously, your certainty level can go down as the game progresses, but if you're 90 percent sure a pitch is wrong in the second inning, you should probably challenge it. 

The worst outcome is everyone saving challenges until late, players challenging a bunch of borderline pitches, and ABS just becoming a late-game coin flip for pitches that can fairly be called balls OR strikes.

I will say that I'm way more into this system than I was at the beginning of the year. It's interesting, adds a strategic element, and mostly has seemed less intrusive as I've managed to get used to it. 

This is interesting and a good topic.

Admittedly, like everyone else, I've been a little annoyed at the Brewers early usage of challenges but this gives me pause..

As a hypothetical, if the Brewers and a specific pitcher have a game plan to work the bottom part of the strike zone against a particular lineup and Contreras does not get a strike call on multiple pitches in the first few innings that he thinks they should be getting or they need to get throughout the game.. is it worth burning one of your challenges the next time a pitch is close so the umpire has a confirmed data point of how far off he is or isn't?

If we challenge a low non-strike call and it is confirmed a ball but it is low by a fraction of an inch, both the umpire and pitcher now know exactly where the ball needs to be for it to be a strike. 

In that scenario is losing a challenge worth getting both pitcher and umpire in agreement on where a strike will be for the rest of the game?

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 hours ago, adambr2 said:

At least the worst we will have gone is 18-15 without Chourio and Vaughn and Quinn. I’ll take it.

Great point. Except the 'at least' doesn't really belong in the statement IMO. Plus Yelich being gone for what, half of the games? They deserve a lot of credit.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

16 hours ago, BruisedCrew said:

Why should a pitch in the strike zone not be called a strike just because  the pitch misses the catcher’s target?

I don’t think there is any question that umpires should be trying to call pitches based on the rule book strike zone as established by ABS. 

Feels like this is going to be a fundamental disagreement and fault line for ABS discussions.

There is such a thing as "always strikes" and such a thing as "never strikes." There is also, though, in my view, such a thing as "sometimes strikes." I don't think the strike zone is one thing. I think it is a negotiation between batter, pitcher/catcher, and umpire. That negotiation is rich and, yes, democratic. I prefer my baseball that way. The challenge system does support this "democratic" idea, importing a kind of Supreme Court that only accepts appeals within the rules and whose decisions are final. That feels good to me.

I concede that the ABS zone is cleaner, easier, and more consistent. And it removes human biases (against particular players or teams or kinds of strikes). Folks are totally free to think that's a better way to watch baseball (I will admit that after a lot of initial skepticism about tennis going all-electric, I now think it's probably the superior way to experience that sport--line arguments there were more of a distraction to the experience, though I think the strike zone is a different thing altogether). Point is, I doubt we'll be able to convince each other.

At the end of the day, I suspect that the "all ABS, all the time" crowd will win. That seems to be the direction these things are heading. Maybe it'll take a while. Maybe all the anti-AI sentiment out there will generate a backlash, and baseball will board the Luddite train. Who knows? I just suspect we'll go all-ABS at some point, and I believe we'll lose something important in the process. I won't make grand proclamations about it ruining the game or anything, but, just like with the anti-shift rule, we'll have lost a kind of human freedom that will make the game different. Not necessarily worse, even. But different, and speaking a different language than the one I grew to love. So it goes with getting older. I'll still speak the language. I'll still love doing it. But everyone will be able to hear my accent, and I bet it'll start to sound funny to a lot of people.