Major League Baseball has concluded its spring training experiment with the automated ball-strike system and the numbers stats from it are promising.
The league released its report on Wednesday and it appears the system worked as it was designed to.
The system was used in 288 spring training games, with an average of 4.1 challenges per game, compared to 3.9 per game in Triple-A during the 2024 campaign. Through spring training, 2.6% of all pitches were challenged, with 52.2% of challenged pitches getting overturned, both figures on par with the system’s use in Triple-A ball in 2024.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, each challenge lasted an average of 13.8 seconds, compared to 16.6 seconds in Triple-A in 2024.
From @MLB: These were the results of spring games with the ABS challenge system pic.twitter.com/QM4XzUwlTe
— Anthony Castrovince (@castrovince) March 26, 2025
It would seem the system is working as desinged—ensuring more calls were correct while keeping stoppages to a minimum. For those who watched games with the system, challenges just seemed to be a seamless part of things, with fans getting to see the tracked pitch cross the plate and anticipate the result.
Given the success of this run with ABS, it feels like the challenge system could make the jump to the majors sooner rather than later.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Numbers Behind MLB's Spring Training Experiment With ABS Challenge System.
