Spring training continues apace even though many eyeballs and rooting interests are locked into the World Baseball Classic. The exhibition games continue to provide a sneak peek into how the relationship between players and umpires will change this season. The brand new Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System is getting quite a workout as pitchers and hitters exercise their new agency when the home plate umpire makes a ruling they disagree with immediately.
The good news is that a larger sample size of these challenges is proving that the addition of legalized second-guessing will not result in unwieldy delays. The bad news, at least to some of the men and women in blue, is that there's the potential everyone will be able to see just how many of these 50-50 calls are being wrongly decided.
