The 10 biggest storylines for MLB's first game with ball-strike challenges

Opening Night is finally here, and that means the start of the ABS era is here, too.

When the Yankees and Giants open the 2026 regular season on Wednesday night at Oracle Park (8 p.m. ET, Netflix), MLB hitters, pitchers and catchers will be able to challenge ball and strike calls for the first time.

We all want to see what happens. All eyes will be on MLB's new Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile. We've been watching ABS at work all spring, and now it's time for the real thing.

Here are the 10 biggest storylines to watch for in MLB's first regular-season game using the ABS challenge system.

1) Who will challenge first?

Everyone will be waiting to see who makes that historic first challenge. Will it be one of the two catchers, Patrick Bailey or Austin Wells? They're the most obvious candidates. Catchers get way more opportunities to challenge than batters, and are way more likely to challenge -- and challenge successfully -- than pitchers. Bailey will have the first crack in the top of the first, receiving pitches from Logan Webb.

Or maybe it'll be a Yankees hitter, like Trent Grisham with his elite plate discipline, Aaron Judge with his uniquely tall strike zone, or someone like José Caballero who was extremely aggressive at challenging in Spring Training. But who knows if there will even be a borderline pitch worth challenging? The first opportunity might flip to the Yankees' battery of Wells and Max Fried, or the Giants' hitters, in the bottom of the first. Matt Chapman and Willy Adames seem likeliest on that front, after both challenged multiple times this spring.

2) Will Bailey be a challenge star?

Bailey looks primed to be one of the best challenging catchers in the Majors. He's the best pitch framer in the game. When he sets up behind the plate, no one knows the borders of the strike zone like he does.

So will that elite skill translate to knowing when to challenge? Just going off the Spring Training data, it sure seems like it will. According to Baseball Savant's challenge stats, Bailey was a top-5 challenging catcher this spring, winning 10 of his 14 attempts.

Bailey has "been an X-factor" for the Giants when it comes to ABS, according to new manager Tony Vitello. And Bailey himself has said: "It's going to be another level that I can take my game [to]."

3) Does Judge challenge a low strike?

The biggest storyline on the Yankees -- literally -- will be Judge. The 6-foot-7 superstar slugger has seen a ton of low strike calls go against him over the years thanks to a strike zone unlike basically any other hitter's. Since Judge's first full season in 2017, he's had by far the most low out-of-zone pitches called strikes on him of any hitter in the Majors.

It's gotten better over the years, but the bottom of the zone to Judge is one area everyone will be watching on Opening Night. Will there be a borderline strike … and will Judge challenge it?

4) Is a team going to run out of challenges?

A perfectly timed challenge in the late innings could swing the game. But to even get the chance for one of those, you need to still have your challenges.

Teams start with only two challenges per game. If you use them frivolously and don't win them, they're gone for good. That might come back to burn you if a call goes against you at the end of a close game. So challenging isn't just about deciding whether the pitch is on or off the plate, it's also about deciding whether the time is right to take the risk.

We saw at Triple-A last season that teams tended to challenge the most often in the late innings. Will the Yankees and Giants save their challenges for those pivotal moments on Opening Night? Or will one -- or both -- of the teams run out?

5) Will any pitcher challenge?

Catchers challenge the most. Batters challenge the next-most. But the third party -- pitchers? They challenge by far the least.

For one thing, a pitcher tends to think everything is a strike. The pitcher also has a much worse view of the strike zone than his catcher does. So what we've seen so far is, when the fielding team challenges, it's almost always the catcher who does it. At Spring Training 2026, the breakdown has literally been 95% catchers, 5% pitchers.

What about the Yankees and Giants pitchers specifically? Well, neither Opening Night starter, Fried nor Webb, challenged even once this spring. A few relievers on each team did challenge: Camilo Doval, Fernando Cruz and Tim Hill from the Yankees and Ryan Walker and José Buttó from the Giants. All of those guys challenged only once apiece, and only Hill and Walker won theirs. But anything is possible.

6) Will the Yankees still be the best challenging team?

The Yankees have been the kings of overturning calls this spring. They have the most total successful challenges (batting and fielding combined) of any team at 2026 Spring Training, as you can see on Baseball Savant's ABS dashboard.

New York has won 54 challenges in all -- 24 as the batting team and 30 as the fielding team -- which is well more than the next-closest teams, the Rockies, Twins, Guardians, Angels, Cubs and Cardinals. We'll see if they can stay on a roll against San Francisco.

7) Is Grisham's elite eye going to help him?

If Bailey's knowledge of the strike zone behind the plate can help him challenge as a catcher, can't Grisham's sense of the strike zone at the plate help him the same way?

Grisham has the best eye of any hitter in this game. The Yankees leadoff man had the third-lowest chase rate of any MLB regular last season -- after only Juan Soto and Gleyber Torres -- swinging at just 17.3% of pitches that were out of the zone.

Now, Grisham challenged a bunch of pitches in Spring Training, and he actually only won two of his five challenges -- losing a few that clipped the outside edge -- but maybe now that the games count for real, he'll only pull the trigger on pitches he considers a sure thing.

8) Can Webb's movement trick New York into wasting its challenges?

Both halves of San Francisco's pitcher-catcher battery could give them an advantage. On top of Bailey and his stellar pitch receiving, there's also Webb and his nasty pitch arsenal.

Webb throws three pitches that get a ton of movement, which could make it very hard for the Yankees to gauge whether they're in the strike zone. First is his sinker, which drops seven inches more than a typical MLB righty's sinker, and also runs 16 inches horizontally. Then there's his sweeper, which breaks 15 inches in the opposite direction. And finally there's his signature changeup, which induces 10 inches more drop than the average righty's.

With those pitches moving all over the place, how will the Yankees' hitters be able to keep track of exactly where they're crossing the strike zone? They might challenge a pitch they shouldn't.

9) Will Fried try to clip the top of the zone with his curveball?

There's been some chatter about whether the ABS system will help pitchers with big curveballs who can drop them onto the top of the zone -- both because they can now challenge a call that was hard for them to get in the past, and because a hitter might waste a challenge on a curveball that looks high all the way to the plate, but actually catches the top edge of the zone.

Well, guess whose signature pitch is a 12-6 curveball with tons of drop? That's right, Fried's. Fried's curveball drops over five feet on its way to the plate, so the Yankees Opening Night starter just might try to use the top of the strike zone to his advantage.

10) Is Caballero going to stay super aggressive?

Of all the hitters who might challenge on Opening Night, Caballero is the most trigger-happy. This spring, the Yankees shortstop challenged six times -- only Willson Contreras challenged more -- and more importantly, Caballero challenged on a whopping 38% of all the challengeable pitches he saw. That makes him ultra-aggressive even compared to the other hitters with the most total challenges at Spring Training. Will his approach be any different in the regular season? We'll find out Wednesday night.