MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System is doing something the sport has never managed before: putting hard numbers on umpire blind spots. Spring Training 2026 data shows that players won more than half their challenges, and the results are reshaping how baseball thinks about fairness and technology.
Numbers Expose Umpire Blind Spots
A striking 52.2% of challenges were successful, meaning more than half the time a player disputed a call, the technology sided with them over the umpire. Games averaged 4.6 challenges and 2.6 overturned calls per contest. One spring game saw seven challenges directed at a single plate umpire.
These aren’t random errors scattered across the zone. Umpires struggle most on borderline pitches, where a 95 mph fastball crosses the plate faster than a human blink. The ABS data now quantifies what players and analysts have long suspected: certain pitch locations consistently fool the human eye.
The Hawk-Eye tracking system behind ABS covered 88,534 pitches with only four going untracked, a near-perfect operational record. Results arrive in roughly 15 seconds, and the strike zone is tied to each individual batter’s body and stance rather than a universal formula. That last detail addresses one of the oldest complaints in the sport.
Umpires Are Not the Villain
None of this data suggests umpires are careless. MLB umpires correctly call the vast majority of pitches, a remarkable feat given the cognitive demands of tracking a spinning ball arriving in fractions of a second.
Early spring numbers, a 52.2% overturn rate and nearly five challenges per game, confirm that umpire blind spots on borderline pitches are real, patterned, and now measurable. Aaron Judge has already used the challenge system this spring, signaling that players view it as a fairness tool rather than an attack on umpires.
The system functions more like a safety net than a replacement, catching the calls that fall through the cracks of human judgment and strengthening the integrity of every at-bat.
