‘I’m not an umpire’: Chris Sale, other Braves players weigh in on ABS system

Don’t expect Braves starting pitcher and Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale to ask for a ball or strike call to be overturned.

“I will never challenge a pitch. I will never do it. I won’t do it,” he said.

MLB has implemented the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System in 2026, allowing players to appeal the strike-zone judgments of umpires. The ABS Challenge System monitors the location of each pitch relative to the batter’s zone, and players can request a challenge of a ball or strike call they feel the umpire got wrong (simply by tapping the top of their head with their hand), according to MLB.com.

Sale, however, doesn’t plan to be calling for any of those challenges.

“I’m not an umpire. I’m a starting pitcher. I’ve never called balls and strikes in my life. Plus I’m greedy. And I know that. I think they’re all strikes,” Sale explained. “The catchers nowadays, the way they catch the ball, the way they receive, they make ‘em all look like strikes. And again, I’m a starting pitcher and I’m greedy. I like pitches that are on the corner that might be a little off.

“In the heat of moment, especially (when) you throw a good pitch, you got ‘Murph’ (Sean Murphy) or ‘Baldy’ (Drake Baldwin) or whoever back there and they kind of catch it the right way, they make a lot of balls look like strikes. And I don’t want to take away one of those challenges that might be needed later on in the game.

“And I’ve dealt with it before. Across all games in my entire career, there’s been balls called strikes and strikes called balls and you just kind of deal with it. Now, if my catcher has something to say about it, I’ll leave that to him. I’ve dealt with both sides and I’m fine to kind of keep dealing with it.”

The system has been used in the minor leagues at times in recent years and during spring training games last season. The 2025 All-Star Game at Truist Park featured the new technology. But 2026 will mark the first MLB season that the technology will be cemented as part of the game.

To get accustomed to ABS, the Braves were already using the technology during the first week of spring, setting it up during live batting practice at CoolToday Park. The pitcher, catcher or hitter can issue a ball-strike challenge during an at-bat, and each team is allotted two challenges per game.

“That’s gonna be a big part of this spring, and we’re gonna work it into the drill work, into the cage work where we have the ABS set up for the catchers and the hitters, so they get an idea of what they’re dealing with,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “That’ll be a work in progress. We’re learning as we go. But we’ve done that the last few springs. There was the three-batter rule, pitch clock, now we’re dealing with ABS. You only stay in this league if you adapt well. The players adapt really well. We always thought all those things were gonna be a bigger issue than they ended up being. It’ll probably be the same way with ABS.”

Here are some other comments from Braves players about their expectations for ABS:

Catcher Sean Murphy: “Last spring, challenging a couple balls, I didn’t get any right. (Catcher Chadwick) Tromp was much better at it. There’s gonna be a comfort factor.

“I think every team is trying to figure out what the approach is gonna be. I know it’s one of the first things that we’re gonna address. We’re gonna go over it with the catching coaches and we’re gonna go over it with the analytics team, what our strategy is gonna be. I think there’s gonna be a skill to it and I think being good at challenging pitches is going to be something we can control. I think we’ll do our best to be as accurate as possible because flipping those close pitches is important.”

Third baseman Austin Riley: “I think spring’s gonna be a really good gauge of it to kind of see how it is. You go through those days where you know the strike zone and you’re like, ‘I know that’s a ball.’ Then you go through days where you see guys that argue and say that’s an absolute strike and it’s two balls (off) the plate. It’s gonna be a little bit of an adjustment. But I think the whole goal of the automatic strike zone is just the overwhelming misses. I think umpires have a really hard job and I think they do a pretty good job of what they do. We’ll see. We’ll get into spring and see how it goes.”

Pitcher Spencer Strider: “I experienced a little bit of it in some rehab starts last year. I think we overestimated the amount of strategy that would go into the pitch clock and some of the other things, step-off limits and that. That kind of stuff evolves naturally. You gotta play with it for a little bit to kind of figure it out. Some teams are gonna be better at that than others. I think ultimately the goal is the same for me: I gotta make the hitter miss. I gotta compete in the strike zone. You gotta get the guys to swing to do that. You gotta challenge ‘em. What happens after that I can’t really influence. In those rehab starts I think I was successful all the times I challenged. But it’s definitely gonna be a learning curve for a lot of guys.”

Catcher Drake Baldwin: “I got to do it a little bit in Triple-A. I have a couple months of experience. After a year without doing it, it will be different. I think it’s kind of feeling it out, trying to get as comfortable with it as I can in spring training, and once the season comes around it’s second nature.”

Second baseman Ozzie Albies: “I heard, because I’m a short guy, it’s gonna help me with the pitches on top. That’s what I heard. I’m excited about that part, for sure. I think it’s definitely great because sometimes you’re in a situation, let’s say bases loaded, two outs, game on the line to win it, and you get called (out) by a pitch way out of the zone. You challenge it and win the game. Winning is everything at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter how it happened. I think it’s gonna be, in certain situations, it’s gonna be great.”