How Spring Training ABS results compare to Triple-A from '25

The first official full Spring Training with the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile is just about in the books, and we’re mere days away from it happening for the first time for real – presumably at some point early in Wednesday night’s Yankees-Giants 2026 lidlifter (8 ET on Netflix).

We’re all excited to see how that goes, but first, let’s do this: What did we just learn? Anything? After weeks of each of the 30 teams feeling their way through the system and trying to figure out what works best for them, what takeaways can we glean from the first spring of ball-strike challenges?

More, perhaps, than you’d think.

Now: let’s keep in mind that Spring Training isn’t exactly like the regular season, for some very obvious reasons. For one thing, the regulars aren’t playing the entire game; for another, many of the biggest stars were off at the World Baseball Classic, which wasn’t using ABS. That’s also true behind the plate, where spring has far more Minor League fill-ins making calls than you’d see in the regular season. Beyond that, in games where winning isn’t the priority, you might be looser about “just trying stuff” than you’d be in games that matter.

On the other hand, we noted a lot of those same caveats a month ago when we looked at the results of the 2025 Triple-A season, too, and what we realized was this: The results in a few weeks of 2026 Spring Training look a lot like the results of the entirety of the 2025 Triple-A season. Not exactly, of course, but really, really close – and if that’s the case, maybe we really do have a pretty good idea of what to expect in the upcoming season.

If we look back at some of last year’s full-season Minor League takeaways and compare it to what we saw this spring, we might be able to get some trends going -- and those might help inform us about what we're about to see in 2026.

Let's review those takeaways from Triple-A 2025 and see if they still hold up.

1) “It’s 50/50 overall, but fielding teams are better at this than batters.”

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “The overturn rate was almost exactly 50%. Batters weren’t as good (45% success rate) as fielding teams (nearly 55%)."

What happened in spring, 2026: Yes, that. Almost exactly that.

In more than 1,800 challenges this spring, the overturn rate was 53%. Batters weren’t as good (45% success rate) as fielding teams (60%). This is more or less exactly what we saw last year, and expected to see this year.

That batters are consistently wrong more often than they’re right tells you something about how effective umpires really are. (Remember that a batter will only challenge when he thinks he’s been wronged, and even then they’re frequently wrong about it.) It also tells you that catchers can play the long game over many batters a lot more effectively than a batter who has only his own plate appearance to worry about.

It is, to be sure, mostly catchers. As of Monday, the fielding team challenge breakdown went like this:

• Catchers: 95%
• Pitchers: 5%

Just 43 of the nearly 1,000 challenges offered by fielding teams came from pitchers, which is both “not many” and “almost more than we expected, given how many voices from around the game said they wouldn’t let pitchers do it.”

That, perhaps, is just spring experimenting; the Yankees, for example, had three pitcher challenges before the end of February and then only two in all of March. But what really did surprise us here is that in the relatively few times a pitcher did tap the hat, they ended up being fairly good at it, winning 56% of challenges. Given that only three pitchers challenged more than once, and only one actually won more than one challenge, we’ll hold off on judgment here until we see this one play out.

A special cap tip, though, for Cardinals Opening Day starter Matthew Liberatore, who took matters into his own hands on March 20 by challenging three times in the first three innings … and winning them all.

2) “Relatively few pitches get challenged.”

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “Slightly more than 1 percent of all pitches resulted in a challenge [and of] takes on the edges of the zone, it was under 7% of pitches that got challenged.”

What happened in spring, 2026: Bang on.

In spring, 1.4% of all pitches resulted in a challenge. Among takes on the edges of the zone – you know, the 50/50 kind of strike-ball call where most challenges would occur – exactly 7% of pitches got challenged. This is almost exactly what we’d already seen.

On a game level, last year at Triple-A, we noted that “61% of games had two or fewer overturns.” In spring this year, as of Monday, 65% of games had two or fewer overturns. Only one game all spring had more than eight calls overturned, and that happened in the very first days of camp, back in February. Everyone, it’s safe to assume, needed a few days to adjust.

Again noting that “the top players in meaningful games” may change the reality, the expectations here are pretty clear, because spring info is matching an entire Triple-A season pretty well so far.

3) “There’s enough of a spread that we expect to see real skill in this.”

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “In terms of teams, we saw the Las Vegas Aviators (A’s) be right 54% of the time as batters, with the 30 teams taking small steps down until the 36% of the Syracuse Mets at the bottom – which is a big spread.”

What happened in spring, 2026: This played out nearly the same.

For batting teams, as of Monday, the Cubs (62% right) were just ahead of the Phillies (61%), with teams taking steps all the way down until you get to the Royals, Tigers and Rangers, who were correct only around 30% of the time. It was similar on the fielding side, with the Cardinals (75%) being excellent, and down and down it went until you get to the Dodgers, at 43%. (It's worth noting the Dodgers slow-played challenges this spring intentionally, gaining a better understanding of how the system plays.)

No single batter got more than five calls overturned (Boston’s Willson Contreras), but quite a few were right 100% of the time, as you’d expect when no one was able to challenge more than six times so far. Among catchers who challenged at least seven times, only three were perfect – Detroit’s Dillon Dingler and St. Louis’s Pedro Pages (8-0) and Cincinnati’s P.J. Higgins (7-0).

Yes, the same P.J. Higgins who showed all-world ability at this in the Minors last year had an undefeated spring. The skill is real.

There is, of course, more to this than just win/loss record. After all, if you’re only challenging the most obvious no-lose calls, you’ll have a great win/loss record, but you’ll have left value on the table by refusing to go after the closer calls, too. You can see this a little in which teams are being aggressive, or not; the Yankees were the most aggressive challengers on both sides of the ball (tapping the helmet on 9.5% of challengeable pitches as batters, and 4.8% as fielding teams), with the Twins second in both.

That’s why we’d created a model that takes into account pitch location, game situation, and challenges left, resulting in an overturned vs. expected metric. (That is, your value takes a hit if you fail to challenge a call that would have gone your way.)

Over the course of a few spring weeks, we see the Reds are +29, in terms of total overturns vs. expected, with that split being +20 as the fielding team (thanks in part to Higgins) and +9 as batters. Most teams clustered between +5 and -5, but there were laggards, too; the Padres were -23, roughly evenly split between -14 (batters) and -10 (fielding team).

There’s value here, if you know how to find it.

4) “Catchers as batters have no extra skill at this.”

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “We thought that catchers as batters would be really good at this … as it turns out: That really, really didn’t happen in Triple-A. Catchers challenged the least of any position at the plate, and when they did, they were correct less than any other glove-wearing spot on the field.”

What happened in spring, 2026: Well. That didn’t change.

Catchers, again, challenged less often (as batters) than any other position. When they did, they were generally not very good at it, tying with left fielders for the lowest overturn rate. This is a myth that maybe already seems busted, but there’s something else here, too. When we looked at this breakdown for Triple-A in 2025, it stood out to us that shortstops were easily the most successful challengers, with second basemen close behind.

Well, look what’s happened in 2026 so far:

Have we stumbled into learning that the infield is a skill position – for a skill that never previously existed? Is there something to the idea that having spent a lifetime corralling rocket grounders from 100 feet away provides you a different look at the ball than catching long, looping fly balls in the outfield? We truly don’t know, but it’s a fascinating trend to watch.

5) “Do taller batters do better in challenges?"

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “We didn’t exactly see [expected ABS success] play out at Triple-A for tall batters. … Instead, maybe it’s Mookie Betts, Jose Altuve and the game’s smaller hitters who stand to benefit here.”

What happened in spring, 2026: It’s not exactly the same, but it feels like it’s trending that way.

Speaking of myths we were excited to explore, every Yankees fan assumes that 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge will benefit massively, simply because it’s difficult to evaluate the bottom end of his zone when that feels like belt level for most hitters. Judge challenged just once in spring (he lost), so we hardly have enough here to make any … well, Judge-ments. (Sorry.)

But, in looking back at Triple-A data, we’d found that the short players (5-foot-9 or under) had the best overturn success rate, and that the top three by the expected value model were all 5-foot-7.

In spring, that didn’t quite happen the same way, as all three groups (short, medium and tall) had even 45% overturn rates. Spencer Jones, himself a 6-foot-7 Yankees outfielder, was 0-4, and the similarly lanky James Wood was 0-3. But, as we noted above, this game is more than just about win/loss rates. While we’re trying not to put too much emphasis on an expected value model over a few weeks of scattered spring playing time, it’s worth noting that of the top eight names this spring, none were taller than 6-foot-1, and three were 5-foot-9 or shorter.

File this one under: Being tall doesn’t yet seem to have helped much. Being short just might.

6) “Batters care more about avoiding strikeouts than fielding teams do about avoiding walks.”

What we said for Triple-A, 2025: “While Triple-A batters challenged on just under 5% of challengeable pitches (4.8%, to be exact), that skyrocketed to 20% on two strikes, and 25% on full counts.”

What happened in spring, 2026: Almost identical. Spring batters tapped the helmet on 4.9% of challengeable pitches. That skyrocketed to 17% on two strikes, and 20% on full counts.

For Triple-A last season, we talked about how challenges were saved for the end of the game, but that didn’t really happen in spring – understandably so, since winning isn’t the key point in March, and because the starting lineup is well out of the game by the ninth inning. We do think that will happen when the games count.

One thing, though, that seems to apply under any circumstance, is that batters are simply going to be far more aggressive in two-strike counts than fielding teams will be in three-ball counts. (This spring, fielding teams challenged just 4% of challengeable three-ball counts, after doing so 4.2% of the time in Triple-A last year.)

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So where does this leave us, headed into Opening Day? It’s worth reiterating that Spring Training is a mix of Major and Minor Leaguers, and experimentation can outweigh competition. When MLB.com did a survey of ballplayers about which of their colleagues they thought would do the best this year, Juan Soto’s name overwhelmingly came up, and yet we didn’t see him try it even once. Much could change.

But so far, trends seem pretty clear. You’ll see plenty of challenges, but not nearly as many as people think. Fielding teams will almost always do better than hitters. Some players are going to have real skill here. New strategies and storylines will reveal themselves. If it's anything like the spring, now you already know what to expect.