The Yankees dropped their first game of the season on Monday night, but their performance with the new ABS challenge system continues to be stellar.
The Bombers bats were all over home plate umpire Mike Estabrook’s missed calls in Monday’s series opener against the Mariners, overturning five strike calls in the first four innings to continue their run of success with challenges since the start of the season. Jose Caballero successfully challenged two strike calls in one at-bat in the top of the third, the second challenge changing a strikeout to a walk. One inning later, Giancarlo Stanton tapped his helmet on a strikeout call, and won the challenge after ABS showed the pitch missed the bottom of the zone by less than 0.1 inches.
Estabrook began to hear it from Aaron Boone and the Yankee dugout in the top of the fourth, as several challenges were used on pitches that were revealed to be below the strike zone. Jazz Chisholm added a successful challenge soon after Stanton’s, making the Yankees 10-for-11 on the young season in the challenge department, with several hitters logging a successful challenge.
The Yanks have quickly emerged as one of the better teams in baseball when it comes to challenging balls and strikes, though the sample size is just four games. Unfortunately for the Bombers, those challenges did not wake up the bats against Luis Castillo and the Mariners, as the Yankee bullpen gave up its first run of the season, in the ninth, a walk-off single by Cal Raleigh in a 2-1 loss.
