Sports

Breaking Down the Extremely Complicated ABS Challenge That Gave Everyone a Lot to Think About

By Kyle Koster Sports Illustrated

After advancing to the American League Championship Series last year the Mariners have been stuck in neutral during the early stages of this season. Dan Wilson's club was able to notch a 7-1 victory over the Twins on Tuesday night to move to 15-16 on the year and move within one game of the Athletics for first place in the AL West. Josh Naylor hit a three-run homer and Julio Rodriguez stroked a two-run double to provide the offense and the Seattle bullpen authored four scoreless innings to seal the victory.

The night was not without some agitation for Wilson, however, as the manager did not care for the way a unique situation was handled in the top of the seventh. Below is video of the play that led to Wilson coming out of the dugout and giving a piece of his mind to home plate umpire Doug Eddings.

Okay, so what exactly happened there?

The answer is a lot.

With a 2-1 count, Randy Arozarena laid off an offering from Twins starter Joe Ryan that was a borderline call near the top of the strike zone. Arozarena also either checked his swing or did not. The confluence of these events created some work for Minnesota catcher Victor Caratini.

Once he heard Eddings rule the pitch a ball, he simultaneously tapped his head for an ABS challenge and asked for an appeal to the first base umpire on the swing decision. Eddings quickly granted the swing element of the request and Arozarena was determined not to have offered at the ball. Caratini's ABS appeal was initially not granted by Eddings, who could be seen shaking his head about something. That's when Twins manager Derek Shelton came out to give his insight on the situation, which were apparently enough to convince Eddings to initiate the replay review.

Video proved that Ryan's pitch actually nipped the strike zone and after all that, the count moved to 2-2. But the drama was not over as this development drew Wilson out onto the field for his own discussion with Eddings.

Wilson's beef was driven by a belief that Shelton had somehow changed Eddings's mind about allowing the ABS challenge. And one can understand frustrations as everyone adapts to a new world of baseball where there's a strict protocol in place to facilitated human-robot peer review.

Yet it does seem like Caratini did everything correctly and in the allotted time. He immediately tapped his helmet for the ball-strike call before pointing down to first base in an attempt to get a strike on the swing. Obviously there is no point in challenging whether a pitch was in the zone or not if a batter swings at it so once that was ruled not to happen then the location of the delivery could be examined.

Eddings himself seems to have handled everything properly in the end as well. It's not unreasonable to give umpires a tiny bit of grace as they sort through complicated moments like this in real-time. Anecdotally, this is the first time a check-swing/replay review situation has come across the transom for me so it's not like there's anything routine about it. Adding technology to the game and asking umpires to governor it with rulings that are essentially judgement calls is going to create oddities like this.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Breaking Down the Extremely Complicated ABS Challenge That Gave Everyone a Lot to Think About.

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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 5:47 AM.

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