As explained here, this baseball season the new ABS system is in play, meaning that batters, catchers and pitchers can challenge ball and strike calls by the home plate umpire and have an electronic plate coverage system instantly reveal if the call was correct or wrong. No longer does the ancient rationalization protecting umpires who have botched crucial pitch calls provide cover: “The pitch is what the umpire says it is.” Not necessarily.
During a spring training game in Scottsdale, Arizona, the San Francisco Giants were leading the Cleveland Guardians 3-0 in the fourth inning. Giants pitcher Robbie Ray faced Guardians third baseman Alex Mooney with two outs and runners on first and second. After Mooney took an 0-2 sinker that home plate umpire Bill Miller called a ball, Giants catcher Patrick Bailey tapped the top of his helmet to signal for a challenge.
“San Francisco is challenging the ‘ball’ call,” Miller announced to the crowd on his microphones. Then the crowd heard him say, “Please be a strike!”
The ABS system confirmed that the pitch was a ball, as Miller had said. The guessing is that the umpire wanted his call to be over-turned because the temperature was over 100, this was a meaningless exhibition game, and he, like everyone else, wanted to get out of the sun.
That raises questions about the integrity of umpires, though maybe not Miller’s, who called the pitch a ball even though a strike might have allowed him to escape the heat sooner. His ad lib also could have been interpreted as a sign that he wanted the Guardians to win, except that nobody cares who wins Spring Training games. Even gamblers don’t bet on them.
The incident brings up a question about the challenge system that I have been musing about lately: why can’t umpires challenge their own calls?
I agree that you don’t want to have umpires second-guessing their pitch calls, saying, “Steee-rike THREE!…well, wait a minute…I think that was a ball. Yeah, let me change that. Ball three.” But former players all have anecdotes about umpires confessing to a batter or a catcher after a missed call, “Yeah, I missed that one.” If an umpire thinks his call was wrong, why shouldn’t be get to challenge his own call?
Ethics Alarms 
So how many challenges does the umpire get? Each team gets so many, how about the umpire, since clearly they have to be counted separately.
I also wonder how the ABS system factors into umpire grading by MLB. Should challenged pitches count double, either plus or minus?
I would give the Home Plate umpire unlimited challenges, with the caveat that if he hst double figures in a single game, he has to retire.
Just think of how much anger and frustration (to say nothing of the wasted player/coach ejections) could have been eliminated if that had been around so that Angel Hernandez could have been put to pasture after just two or three games.
Or just let the ABS system call every pitch and let the home plate umpire simply announce the call.
This seems like a common sense thing to protect the game from fragently bad calls late in the game should a team burn through its challenges early in the game. Similar to a judge dismissing obviously bad juror candidates so lawyers need not waste their challenges or preemptory dismissals.
Some sport have booth review, where the challenge comes from referees off the field who are watching multiple feeds of the game. There is no reason other than stubborness to not implement it for balls and strikes.
See, e.g., tennis. Every line call is done with the computer. There are no longer any line judges. There is no appeal system, nor is there a need for one. Come on, MLB, stop fiddle farting around with the Rube Goldberg like system you’re putting in place to accommodate the umpires’ union. Get over it and grow up. And by the way, fewer strikes called as balls will greatly speed up the games.
Though I will greatly miss Kyle Schwarber turning and slamming his bat to the ground…or the time Bryce Harper looked at the ump after a called third strike, then laid his bat down on the line tracing the ball’s path (about four inches off the outside corner).
Classic…