Dingler goes 4-for-4 on ABS challenges: 'It's big to know the zone'

DETROIT -- The 0-2 slider from Keider Montero dropped in on Cardinals slugger Iván Herrera, leading off the fourth inning. The grid on the Peacock broadcast showed the pitch just off the outside corner; plate umpire Mark Wegner saw it the same way.

Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler saw it differently. He stopped his throwing motion to tap his helmet, ball in hand, to call for the ABS challenge and immediately looked out toward Comerica Park’s gigantic scoreboard.

“And this is …” play-by-play broadcaster Jason Benetti said, setting up the suspense as the replay loaded and the recreated ball floated towards the corner.

At that point, Dingler was in the same spot as the crowd in the ballpark and the TV viewers at home.

“You’re just hoping to God you got it right, to be honest,” Dingler said. “Obviously you don’t want to take away an opportunity for another guy that would want to challenge, if you run out of challenges later in the game. You just want to make sure you’re right, even though we will have situations where somebody guesses wrong.”

This was not one of those wrong situations.

“... strike three,” Benetti finished as the graphic ball ticked the edge of the graphic zone.

“Give him the hat trick,” Andy Dirks quipped.

“Dillon Dingler’s going to end up with the Wings pretty soon,” said Benetti, in reference to the neighboring Detroit Red Wings.

By the time Sunday evening was over, Dingler was 4-for-4 in getting balls overturned to strikes. He couldn’t save the Tigers from a 5-3 loss that denied them a series sweep, but he saved his pitchers some work and continued his perfect start using the system.

“He’s great at that,” Montero, who has worked with Dingler since the Minor Leagues, said through translation from Tigers director of Spanish communications and broadcasting Carlos Guillen. “There were a couple pitches that were just, 'ehh, yes or no,' but he called it and he won it. I’m grateful for having him. He owns the zone pretty good.”

Not long ago, the Tigers looked like they’d be one of the more conservative teams on challenges this season. They had the fewest challenges in the Majors in Spring Training, and they were lamenting a missed challenge in a key at-bat during their season-opening series in San Diego.

Just over a week later, they’re getting the hang of it. They challenged a couple of called strikes that turned into balls on Saturday, eventually leading to two of their six walks at the plate in their 11-6 win. Dingler’s work Sunday led directly to one strikeout and set up two other outs by turning first-pitch balls into strikes.

Dingler is 7-for-7 challenging pitches so far this season. At 3-for-3 entering Sunday, he was already ranked among the leading catchers in challenges in terms of net runs more than expected by a player seeing the identical pitches, despite having a relatively low rate of challenges to pitches that could “reasonably” be considered.

“I’m getting to that point where, obviously with a few games under my belt now behind the plate, I’m starting to know the zone a little bit more, especially on the corners,” Dingler said. “The corners are going to stay the same. Obviously the ones that are the toughest are the ones up and down. I’ve started to be a little bit more confident in [the zone], because we can check when we go back in the dugout. It’s mostly just trusting yourself in that situation to know the zone.”

This is the scenario manager A.J. Hinch hoped to see when he let his players get a feel for the system in Spring Training without much restriction. At the time, he said that those players who know the zone would benefit the most from the system.

“The catcher, we have the best seat in the house,” Hinch, a former catcher himself, said. “It’s right there for you. The real tough part is how these are on the margins, and they change counts, they change at-bats, they can change innings.

“You have to have confidence in the strike zone. That’s the biggest thing that we’re preaching is be confident in your strike zone, whether you’re at bat or if you’re [Dingler] or [fellow catcher Jake Rogers] behind the plate. We saw tonight where some marginal pitches went our way because we were in a good position to challenge.”

That confidence is reinforced by postgame sessions.

“We see all of it now,” Dingler said. “It’s a separate postgame scouting that we get now, and it’s big. It changes the game. We’ve seen it already. It flips counts and it flips at-bats. It’s big to know the zone.”