When the Yankees and Giants open the 2026 regular season on Wednesday night at Oracle Park (8 p.m. ET, Netflix), MLB hitters, pitchers and catchers will be able to challenge ball and strike calls for the first time.
We all want to see what happens. All eyes will be on MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile. We’ve been watching ABS at work all spring, and now it’s time for the real thing.
Everyone will be waiting to see who makes that historic first challenge. Will it be one of the two catchers, Patrick Bailey or Austin Wells? They’re the most obvious candidates. Catchers get way more opportunities to challenge than batters, and are way more likely to challenge — and challenge successfully — than pitchers. Bailey will have the first crack in the top of the first, receiving pitches from Logan Webb.
Or maybe it’ll be a Yankees hitter, like Trent Grisham with his elite plate discipline, Aaron Judge with his uniquely tall strike zone, or someone like José Caballero who was extremely aggressive at challenging in Spring Training. But who knows if there will even be a borderline pitch worth challenging? The first opportunity might flip to the Yankees’ battery of Wells and Max Fried, or the Giants’ hitters, in the bottom of the first. Matt Chapman and Willy Adames seem likeliest on that front, after both challenged multiple times this spring.
Bailey looks primed to be one of the best challenging catchers in the Majors. He’s the best pitch framer in the game. When he sets up behind the plate, no one knows the borders of the strike zone like he does.
So will that elite skill translate to knowing when to challenge? Just going off the Spring Training data, it sure seems like it will. According to Baseball Savant’s challenge stats, Bailey was a top-5 challenging catcher this spring, winning 10 of his 14 attempts.
Bailey has