This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
The first ABS challenge from Dillon Dingler on Wednesday came on the fifth pitch of the game, a rare early call for a catcher who is cognizant of when to make a challenge. But with a chance to keep Angels leadoff hitter Zach Neto off the basepaths following his three-hit game the previous night, and believing a 2-2 sinker from Casey Mize had caught the corner, Dingler took the chance.
“What I've learned over the season is that if you're confident, if your first gut reaction is to challenge it, you should challenge it,” Dingler said.
Mize agreed.
“I was going to challenge if he didn’t,” Mize said.
The challenge on Mike Trout a couple innings later was a tougher call, but a bigger situation, with a runner on and two outs. The sinker from Mize initially looked low, but ABS deemed it to have scraped the bottom rail of the strike zone.
“I was like, 'Noooo, shouldn't have,'” Mize said. “And he was right."
Those were two of Mize’s six strikeouts over four scoreless innings. Add in a sixth-inning challenge from reliever Drew Anderson on a 2-2 pitch to Neto, and three of Detroit’s nine strikeouts came on ABS challenge.
It was a good night for the Tigers to not only know the strike zone, but be confident in advocating for it. It was also a good reflection on how Dingler is becoming more comfortable taking chances early, even if the situation doesn’t necessarily push for it.
“I revert back to whatever your gut reaction is, go for it,” Dingler said.
No catcher in the Majors has been more effective at using ABS than Dingler, who leads MLB with 19.0 overturns over expectations, according to Statcast. He has won 26 of 36 challenges on the season, including six for strikeouts. However, his challenge rate of 1.8 percent of “challengeable pitches” is below the expected rate of 2.2 percent.
Dingler’s challenges are actually fairly balanced by innings, with as many made in the first four innings as the last four (16 each). Still, Dingler tries balancing knowledge of the situation with confidence in the call.
“I feel like we've been good,” he said. “I'd rather save them for later in the game or a big situation. I'm not going to burn one with nobody on and a first pitch. The risk-reward of those are kind of stupid in my opinion to try to see if maybe it was a strike when I'm not sure. So I just save them for when I'm sure, and then for situations that I hope this is a strike.”
He has the trust of his manager as well as his pitchers.
“There's some guts to it,” A.J. Hinch said. “There's also some recognition, and I think Ding obviously is gaining confidence as he has more success. But they're also game-changers. I mean, those are really tough, whether it's a strike three or whether it flips a count.
“As we've learned more about this ABS system, you see how it impacts the game. It's not anti-umpire. It's just meant to get the calls right and put the power in the player's hand to flip a count if they have confidence in the strike zone. So when Ding can do that, that's a difference maker. You want to be right, but you want to also do it at the right time because you have confidence.”
Add in Dingler’s well-established ability to frame pitches -- he ranks in the 95th percentile with 4 Framing Runs, per Statcast -- and he gets more strikes for his pitchers one way or another than anybody in the game.
“Overall, I think what you want to do in my position is just try to get the umpire to call as many strikes as possible,” Dingler said.