Will challenge system meet its match in Juan Soto? He has the 'green light'
No one has a better grasp of the strike zone than Juan Soto, so it stands to reason that the Mets superstar will have a natural advantage with the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System coming to MLB in 2026. The Mets are counting on it.
With two challenges available for each team to start every game, clubs will have to be strategic about how they use them. Only pitchers, catchers and hitters can initiate challenges, and not every hitter will be trusted to do so. But it appears Soto will have free reign, according to Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns.
“I think Juan's probably gonna have the green light to challenge,” Stearns told reporters on Tuesday at Citi Field. “We'll talk through that. But yes. I don't know, but I would expect Juan to be pretty damn good at this. So that's exciting.”
The Joint Competition Committee voted in September to bring the ABS Challenge System to the big leagues following several years of experimentation in the Minor Leagues and use in MLB Spring Training and the All-Star Game in 2025.
That prior experience gives teams some early data to guide challenge strategy, and Spring Training this year will provide more chances to experiment. However, Stearns admitted that it will take time to determine the best approach and for teams to fully develop their strategies -- from determining the best counts in which to challenge to figuring out which players are going to have the leeway to initiate challenges.
“I don't know that everyone's just gonna roll out their ABS strategy in Spring Training,” he said. “But that is a part of it. … Every team is going through that preparation right now with the ABS, and it's going to take a year or two for, I think, the industry to coalesce around their strategies.
“We have some data because this has happened in Triple-A already, but I would expect the environment of the big leagues to change behavior a little bit, and so I don't think any of us is really going to be able to figure out what the optimal strategy is until we get farther into a Major League season with this playing out.”
At the very least, though, Stearns appears to have one aspect of the Mets’ ABS strategy settled: Trust Soto.