Major League Baseball will introduce the automated Balls Strikes Challenge System (ABS system) next season after complaints about the way balls and strikes are mentioned. It can be a year late for the San Diego Padres.
They could have really used that system on Thursday evening in their 3-1 game 3-loss for the Chicago Cubs that ended their 2025 season.
The victory of the Cubs sends them to the NLDS where they will play the Milwaukee Bewers.
Padres was robbed of important basic runner in the ninth inning
After Jackson Merrill had distracted the top of the ninth inning with a solo-home run to get the Padres on the board, Xander Bogaerts stood for a 3-2 count and thought he had taken an important walk to bring the draw on the board.
The field was clearly under the battle zone and Bogaerts started to walk to first base until Home Plate Umpire DJ Reyburn called him on a third strike.
You don’t even need the K-Zone to see that the pitch is of the plate and is low. It should have been Ball Four and it should have a single with anyone out.
That call would be even bigger if Cubs closer Brad Keller hit the next two Padres stroke people. If Bogaerts had received the walk, he would have had the Padres, the bases had not loaded with anyone. Although you cannot assume that everything would have played in the same way, there is a good chance that the Padres could at least have given itself to bind the game with the soft groundout from Jake Cronenworth and fly to the deep center of Freddy Fermin who followed.
MLB has tested the ABS system in the spring training and the 2025 All-Star Game, and will bring it to the regular season next season. It gives teams two challenges of Ball-Trike calls per game. If the Padres had had a challenge in that at bat, they would have a legitimate chance of binding the game, or perhaps even expand their season.
The addition of the K-Zone to TV broadcasts, as well as the graphics on MLB.com and ESPN that emphasize where the fields are located, has put extra pressure on referees and also emphasizes missed calls. Before all that technology was in place, an extensive or shrinking stroke zone of a certain referee was just seen as part of the game. Or at least nobody could easily see the difference between balls and strikes.
Now that the technology is there (or the K-Zones and Gamecasts are accurate), people want to see the calls correctly. Missed calls, especially at great moments, furious with both teams and fans angry. From next season there may be at least some lighting on that. It has been too late for a long time.
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