ABS Challenges
The challenge system, quantified — who burns challenges, who banks them, and which catchers are still stealing strikes. Plus the live walk-spike tracker.
2026 ABS challenge data. Who's challenging, how often the call gets overturned, and how much each overturn was worth (the count matters — a 3-2 overturn is worth ~5× a 1-0). Catchers overturn ~59% of their challenges vs ~48% for batters — the best challengers are catchers. One honest caveat as you sort: at a handful of challenges each, individual win rates are mostly small-sample luck — the durable edge is the catcher’s seat, not any one player — why winning a challenge is close to a coin flip. Challenge metrics →
The Walk Spike
Walks are up roughly +0.50 percentage points in 2026 vs. the same calendar window in 2025 — and just +0.34pp over the most recent stretch. The spike is fading. The new zone’s mechanism (the lost top-edge first-pitch strike) replicates cleanly, but at the break its share of the spike (≈18%) can no longer be separated from zero — pitchers adapting explain most of the rest.
Live weekly trajectory live · nightly
2026 weekly walk rate (red) extends each week as the season progresses. The 2025 dashed line is a fixed reference for the same calendar weeks. Updated nightly.
Read the full analysis: The Walk Spike Is Fading →R2: ABS Took the High Strike (Apr 23) · R1: Umpires or Pitchers? (Apr 9)