Salvador Perez and the Kansas City Royals have been baseball’s best at utilizing their robot challenges through the first weekend of the .
Perez topped all catchers by going 4-0 , while San Francisco’s Heliot Ramos and Cincinnati’s Eugenio Su谩rez were the only batters who went 2-0 鈥� Su谩rez won his appeals on consecutive pitches.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if I like it or not,” Perez said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want the umpire to look bad.鈥�
Three-time MVP Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels is 3-1 on challenges.
Atlanta鈥檚 Ronald Acu帽a Jr. was the only batter who went 0-2.
Kansas City and Arizona were the only perfect teams, with the Royals 4-0 and Arizona 3-0. Houston was 0-6 and St. Louis was 0-3.
Many teams have tried to save their challenges for high-leverage situations.
鈥�1-1 counts. Counts that are going to end the at-bat. Those are big challenge times,鈥� said Phillies manager Rob Thomson, whose team went 4-3.
Challenges had a 53.7% success rate through 47 games. There were 175 challenges, an average of 3.7 per game.
Catchers succeeded on 59 of 92 challenges for a 64% rate, but batters on 33 of 78 for a 42% rate. There were just five challenges by pitchers, with Baltimore’s Ryan Helsley and the Athletics’ Hogan Harris winning, and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Edwin D铆az, Houston’s Roddery Mu帽oz and Philadelphia’s Zach Pop losing.
Cincinnati batters went 6-0, while Braves batters were 0-4.
鈥淲e have guidelines that we think are strategic and give us a good idea of when we want to challenge,” said Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable, whose team is 4 for 9. “A mid-at-bat challenge is different than a potential strikeout or walk.
C.B. Bucknor had the poorest ABS results among umpires when six of eight challenges of his calls were successful during Cincinnati’s on Saturday. All six overturned calls involved strikes being changed to balls. The two confirmed calls involved a ball and a strike.
Boston’s Alex Cora was ejected in that game by Bucknor for arguing a checked swing call.
鈥淚 feel bad for them because everybody has a bad day,” Thomson said of the umpires. “The last thing you want to see is somebody get embarrassed. I don鈥檛 care who it is, player, coach, umpire. I don鈥檛 want to ever see anybody get embarrassed playing this game.鈥�
Minnesota鈥檚 Derek Shelton became the first manager ejected for arguing an ABS call on Sunday. He was tossed in the ninth inning of a game against Baltimore after complaining that Helsley waited too long to signal for a review.
that started this season, to a system based on 12 Hawk-Eye cameras that measure whether any part of the ball crosses the strike zone with accuracy of about one-sixth of an inch.
鈥淚 kind of believe there鈥檚 going to be a change with the percentage of the ball that鈥檚 touching,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “When the ball just nicks it, should that be a strike?鈥�
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AP Sports Writers Dan Gelston, Steve Megargee and Dave Skretta contributed to this report.
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