Getting measured for ABS is a science: 'People shrink over the course of a day'

PHOENIX -- Major League Baseball can’t implement the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System this season without knowing every hitter’s precise height, right down to the millimeter. So, like a flashback to the first day of elementary school, Brewers hitters lined up Monday to be measured.

Major Leaguers have been weighed and measured since the sport’s beginnings, but starting this year it’s a seriously standardized process -- right down to the hour. Teams are mandated by MLB to take measurements between 10 a.m. and noon local time on their appointed day.

Why does that matter?

“Because people shrink over the course of a day,” said Brewers assistant GM Will Hudgins, the club’s point man on ABS. “I’m not entirely sure how much, but I’ve been told that enough times to believe that it is scientifically true.”

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Among the other rules set forth by MLB:

• No shoes
• No hats
• Knees exposed
• Heels together
• Back against the wall
• No slouching

“It was very detailed,” Hudgins said. “You can tell they have done this in the Minor Leagues and have thought about every part of this.”

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Every detail matters because calls can come down to one stitch of the baseball. Former Brewers shortstop Willy Adames, for example, won a challenge during opening weekend of the Cactus League on a pitch that missed his personal strike zone by less than one-tenth of one inch.

Determining the width of the zone was straightforward. It’s the same as home plate: 17 inches. As for depth, measurements occur at the point the baseball crosses the midpoint of home plate -- 8 1/2 inches from the front and 8 1/2 inches from the back. (A three-dimensional version was initially tested, but it allowed breaking balls to nick the edges of the zone, leading to inconsistency in strike calls.)

Setting the strike zone from top to bottom required more testing and discussion. MLB studied the problem for multiple years, including trials in the Arizona Fall League and in the Minor Leagues, before settling on the top end of the zone at 53.5% of a hitter’s height, and the bottom at 27% of the player’s height.

The Brewers and A’s were the last two teams to be measured in Arizona on Monday, according to Hudgins.

“It could impact the playoffs and the World Series,” he said. “So they were very methodical.”

Led by MLB vice president of on-field strategy Joe Martinez, officials from the league measured each player twice with a device similar to the one you’d see in a doctor’s office. They took at least two measurements, and if there was a discrepancy more than a couple of millimeters, a third. Then, they figure the average of the three.

What about in-season call-ups or free agents who weren’t measured on Monday? There’s a plan for that. Every ballpark will be equipped with a measuring device, and a member of the home team’s medical staff will be a certified measurer. In Milwaukee’s case, it will be assistant athletic trainer Nick Jensen.

Players who were measured on Monday could ask for the final result. But the answer came in fractions of centimeters.

“You saw a lot of guys trying to do a centimeters-to-feet conversion in their heads,” Hudgins said.

Thankfully for the math-adverse, the MLB officials helped make that calculation. More than once, players took some razzing from waiting teammates when the result came in under expectations.

MLB.com and other publications will continue to use height and weight information from media guides for the public databases, so Hudgins didn’t disclose any results. The tallest of the 50 or so hitters from Major League and Minor League camp who were measured -- basically, every hitter on hand at American Family Fields of Phoenix -- was 20-year-old infield prospect Eric Bitonti (No. 21 on MLB Pipeline’s Brewers Top 30). He’s listed at 6-foot-4.

But the measurements matter for players big and small.

“I love it, because I feel like back in the day, it wasn’t fair,” said outfielder Steward Berroa, who logged 310 plate appearances in Triple-A last season for the Blue Jays, Dodgers and Brewers organizations. “You can’t judge somebody who is 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5, with somebody who is 5-foot-9, 5-foot-10 like me. Hitting is hard already, right? Those little things, I think, will help us little guys -- especially at the top of the zone.”

Right-hander Coleman Crow agreed.

“I feel like we got a lot more challenges right down at the bottom of the zone, that were initially called balls, than we did at the top,” Crow said. “I just kind of keep that at the back of my head when I’m attacking guys.”

With so many pitchers throwing harder than ever at the top of the zone, does that mean advantage, hitter? Maybe, according to Berroa.

But he expects to be saddled with more strikes that clip the inside and outside edges of home plate, even though they look like balls to the umpire.

“As a hitter, you have to give some to get some,” Berroa said. “And the good thing is that the strike zone is going to be the strike zone every time. If you challenge a pitch and it’s a strike, you’re not able to complain. You just have to adjust.”