In a bizarre twist, the two-time defending World Series champions are the worst team in baseball at using the new automated ball-strike challenge system, with a success rate less than half the league average.
Baseball’s most meticulously constructed franchise is facing an unfamiliar crisis of precision. As the Los Angeles Dodgers prepare to defend their World Series title, they are being humbled by a technological innovation designed to take subjectivity out of the game: the new automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system. Through the first weeks of Cactus League play, the Dodgers’ success rate on challenges is not just poor—it’s the worst in Major League Baseball by a staggering margin.
The system, introduced for regular-season play this year, allows each team two unsuccessful challenges per game to dispute called balls and strikes via an automated review. In theory, it’s a tool for correction. For the Dodgers so far, it’s been a tool for frustration. Entering Saturday, they had won only five of their 27 challenged calls, an anemic 18.5% success rate. Every other team has overturned at least 12 calls. The New York Yankees lead baseball with 37 successful challenges.
The breakdown is more alarming. Among hitters, the Dodgers’ 15% rate (2 for 11) is six percentage points worse than any other club. Among pitchers and catchers, their 21% success rate (3 for 11) isn’t even half as good as the next closest team. These are not small sample size quirks; they are consistent, organization-wide failures in a sport increasingly defined by marginal gains.
Manager Dave Roberts has acknowledged the issue without panic, announcing an “organization forum” to discuss strategies. His diagnosis was blunt: “Our idea of the strike zone individually, collectively just hasn’t been great.” The Dodgers have approached spring training with an exploratory mindset, prioritizing calibration over strategy. As first baseman Freddie Freeman noted, “Even if we’re wrong, we need to use it just to figure out the tops and bottoms of the zone.”
That process has been humbling. Sample sizes for projected major leaguers remain tiny, but the team’s primary challenge-takers have looked lost. Outfielder Alex Call is 1 for 2. Catcher Dalton Rushing leads the team with six attempts and is 2 for 6. The lessons have been excruciatingly fine. Earlier this week, Rushing challenged a pitch that ABS ruled a ball by less than 1/10th of an inch. He joked with SportsNet LA: “I would’ve bet my whole life that baseball was touching the zone.” On Saturday, he earned a rare victory when a challenge showed the pitch clipped the corner, prompting a playful look to the sky in thanks.
The immediate practical impact may be limited. With only two allowed missed challenges per game, most overturned calls will not alter outcomes. Yet for a franchise built on analytical superiority, this public struggle is jarring. The Dodgers have been baseball’s gold standard for player development, technology integration, and in-game decision-making. Their inability to master a tool designed to perfect the most fundamental call in the sport suggests a disconnect somewhere in their preparation.
Fan forums are already buzzing with theories. Is the team’s hitting approach—often geared toward ambushing pitches in specific zones—at odds with the ABS’s calibrated definition? Are the Dodgers’ veteran hitters, who have relied on instinct for years, fundamentally unable to recalibrate? Could this be a deliberate, hidden strategy to preserve challenges for the highest-leverage moments, accepting a low early success rate as a cost of education? Roberts himself said, “I honestly don’t know the answer right now.”
History shows the Dodgers excel at adapting. They cracked the code on defensive shifts and launch angles, turning data into dominance. The ABS system, however, is not a trend to be exploited but a universal constant to be mastered. Every team faces the same zone. The Dodgers’failure to meet it head-on, while their rivals thrive, contradicts their identity.
Opening Day is March 26. The team has less than two weeks to turn a 15% hitter success rate into something respectable. The league average is expected to hover around 30-35%. While the challenges won’t lose many games outright, a wasted challenge in the 8th inning of a close contest could prove catastrophic. More importantly, the optics of a champion stumbling on a rules innovation designed to aid accuracy are damaging. The message sent to opponents: even the best have a weakness.
For now, the Dodgers can only absorb the lessons of a spring defined by near-misses. The ABS system has
