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Based on what's available in the bulpen, I'm fine leaving him out there to get through the 6th and getting through the end of the order if he's reasonably efficient (He's at 85 pitches at the moment)

In some ways this is why I think teams will never be like "We told Wallner not to challenge" Other than placating the fans, what's to be gained with that. So I've been hopeful that the reason we haven't heard things like that through the media was that there was no real incentive for the Twins to put that out there. But the hitters decisions have been so bad (I know I keep harping on that, but they've been really bad), that I've become skeptical that these discussions are happening even behind the scenes. Which is a real problem, in my opinion.

I have to think there have been SOME discussions in the clubhouse about when hitters should be using their challenges, but the last few games the hitters have been making SUCH bad decisions that it actually makes me a little worried that Shelton is treating this a little too unseriously. The last two games having the ABS challenges in the late innings has had such a massive positive effect that it seems like the perfect real world example to use in that discussion. "Austin, I know you thought it wasn't a strike, But regardless of whether you were right or wrong, that strike just didn't mean that much. Just look at what Jeffers has been able to do to help out our pitchers late in the ballgames. We need to keep our challenges. It's critical to winning ballgames." Edited to add: I don't know the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if those 4 correct challenges by Jeffers had close to a +1 Run Saved. If Martin would've been correct with his challenge yesterday, it would've been like +0.005 runs gained. Meaningless.

Another one - Will team-level decisions be made based on the Home Plate Ump that day? For example, if you know you've got CJ Bucknor behind the plate, do you say to your hitters something like "we really need the catchers to have the challenges today. There are still wituations where it's ok, but I need you to be really sure, especially in the first 5 or so innings" Will you put a different catcher behind the plate that day?

Some thoughts i had in early March.... ------------------- I like the direct effects of the ABS challenge system. Adding a layer of strategy. Getting more calls right. And probably adding a little bit of time to the game length in order to have those things happen. But its the secondary effects that I think are WAAAAAY more interesting and something I've been thinking about a lot. If there's an advantage to be gained players will try to gain it. If there's a new thing to be measured, people will try to measure it. Here are the big ones in my mind. I'd love to hear other thoughts and ideas on this. 1. Length of game – I think this has maybe been overstated a little. The actual time it takes to do the challenge is 10-15 seconds. We are, at most, adding like 2 minutes to game length, directly from the time it takes to perform the reviews. HOWEVER… we don’t yet know if it is the pitcher or the hitter who is going to end up with an advantage over a large sample. If the pitcher ends up with the advantage, then offense will trend down slightly, and the games will shorten. If the batters end up with the advantage, then the opposite will be true. It's hard to say which way it’ll go at this point and it might be a little bit team dependent, depending on how they allow their players to deploy the challenges 2. The strike zone – There’s a lot here. All players have been physically measured and so now they all have their own unique strike zone within the ABS system. They’ve all theoretically had unique strike zones up to this point, but that relied on the umpires to make adjustments on the fly and I suspect that they didn’t fully account for the size difference between, say, Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge. Do smaller players now get to fully realize the strikezone advantage they should’ve been getting this whole time? Does Emmanuel Rodriguez's small stature and good eye at the plate give him and even larger advantage that he's been seeing in the minor leagues up to this point? How does digging into the box affect things? It doesn’t take long into a game for there to be a hole in the batters box. Given that the strikezone will be based on the height of the plate, not the height that the player is standing at, is there an advantage to be gained by “digging in” an inch or two below the level of the plate. The new measured strike zone would go from the top of the knee, to now higher up the leg. This would help players that struggle with low strikes and have the opposite effect on players that struggle with high strikes. Will MLB regulate the amount of digging into the batters box that players are allowed to do? What about cleat length? 3. Catcher metrics – Pitch framing is no longer quite as important, but will there be a new metric of “Catcher Judgement?” I think most people agree that the catcher is in the best position to accurately judge whether a pitch was incorrectly called a ball. I’m envisioning two new measurements. A) challenge accuracy. This one is simple. How many challenges did they call for and how many of those were correct, but B) one more layer deep we will be able to analyze how many calls they SHOULD have challenged and the leverage of those pitches. You’d love to correctly challenge every missed call, but a missed 0-0 pitch that just clips the corner isn’t nearly as impactful or as big of a miss as a missed strike 3 call that caught a lot of the plate. "Catcher Judgement" feels like it's going to be a massively impactful statistic. Also, Catcher receiving position has been a hot topic the last few year. Mostly, I believe, catchers have tried to get lower behind the plate, in order to get more low strikes called. Does that matter as much any more? Will catchers go back to a more traditional crouch because it gains them back a slight advantage in throwing out runners? ------------------------ That advantage (of catcher/pitcher vs hitter) MIGHT be so stark that teams don't even really want their hitters triggering ABS challenges because of the much higher likelihood that they are wrong and they don't want their catchers to lose that ability going forward in the game. It could be that they only allow the hitters to challenge in truly extreme leverage positions, whereas, as the catchers prove out their ability to be correct a high percentage of the time, they have a much longer leash in terms of when teams allow their catchers to challenge. Said another way... Just because, if looking back at old data, the misses that umps make tend to be more likely balls that were called strikes (calls batters would challenge), doesn't mean that those are the calls more likely to be correctly challenged. It could be that catchers would also be really good at identifying those calls, but they are, of course, not going to challenge calls that have benefitted the pitcher.

Completely disagree. There is so much strategy and several secondary effects of the new ABS system

I can't believe this topic doesn't have more discussion. This is the most interesting aspect of the 2026 season, in my opinion.

This is helping out big time with the divisional tiebreakers.

There's an interesting side effect to Wallner making these challenges on pitches that end up being obvious strikes. Now pitchers know that he doesn't think those are strikes. I bet he gets a lot more pitches in those areas.

I have no idea who on the team is smart and who isn't, but I also think you just lost about 1/3 of them with the word "hierarchy," so the key to maximizing the ABS challenges is probably to know the audience and give them clear instructions. Like... "Wallner. Its the 2nd inning and there's 1 out and nobody on. I don't care if you think strike 3 missed by 3 feet, You don't challenge here. Period."

Batters should be banned from it for all but the highest leverage situations. It's just too valuable for the catchers to have to be burning them on the hitting side. Last night was the prime example of that. I swear Jeffers got like 0.2 WPA just from those two challenges to end the 6th and 7th innings. Also... some website has to be tracking WPA for challenges (won and lost), right?

Jeffers the challenge demon!

Does Taj go 3-0 every time he gets to 2 outs?

With the ABS system in place, aren’t all of the measurements accurate now?

All this talk about these right handed AAA infielders (Culpepper at SS and Gonzalez at 1B) getting called up this year has me thinking that the lefthanded Tristan Gray selection as back up SS to start the year might have been a bit of foretelling. Because if by May you've got Lewis, Culpepper, Keaschall, Bell as your primary infielders from left to right, then having Gray and Gonzalez as your backups (or pushing Bell to DH) actually looks to have good platoon/days off flexibility.

I'm personally offended by lazy, repetitive analysis and jokes.

I’d rather the stands be full, but we all know the attendance is going to suck. It just so constantly gets brought up. No reason to discuss it all year and post pictures on social media showing empty seats each game.

Why is everyone so obsessed with attendance numbers. Geez. Who cares.

OK. I’ve had enough. These CarShield commercials are the worst

I think Larnach was 1-1 count, but Bell was the first pitch.

The 12th and 13th round picks that have both contributed to the MLB team? One of whom has around 10 career WAR? Those haven’t gone well?

I mean, yeah... it's basically the Mirriam-Webster definition of what's going on.

Given how extraneous Clemens is, I think it actually can work. It just means more time for Bell and/Caratini at 1B and probably more time for Wallner at DH. Not perfect, but doable.

Larnach and Clemens serve no purpose and should be gone. Outman can provide some value as the 25/26th man on a decent team. He can stick around for now. If he stinks though May, then Fedko can come up and play that role Wallner has enough positive history that he should get a much longer leash than Larnach. Ride with him until midseason. If at that point he’s performing like last year or worse, then reduce his role. Ober, same as Wallner, but with less of a clear replacement so he probably gets the full season to prove if he can be serviceable at 89mph ERod should be up in a week when his MLB service time clock stays at zero for 2026. Roden should also be up with the Larnach/Clemens exodus, but without any real service time concern. Culpepper and Jenkins can be midseason replacements for underperforming players (Like Wallner and Lee/Lewis), assuming they both keep performing well. Prielipp? Not sure what the Twins are doing with him. I’d probably keep him as a starter through June to build up innings, then call him up and use him in the bullpen for the rest of the year. With the goal of getting him to 120 innings on the year Zebby…. Find a role for him once he has a solid month at AAA. Anyone else?

My biggest complaint is that the Twins rarely spend beyond their bonus pool. It’s not a hard cap. There are just penalties for going your pool. The penalties start rather small and then escalate to very severe. Many (most?) other team spend beyond their pools. ——— "A team that exceeds its bonus pool faces a penalty. A club outspending its allotment by 0-5 percent pays a 75% tax on the overage. At higher thresholds, a team loses future picks: a first-rounder and a 75% tax for surpassing its pool by more than 5 and up to 10 percent; a first- and a second-rounder and a 100% tax for more than 10 and up to 15 percent; and two first-rounders and a 100% tax for more than 15%." ——— Said more plainly… The Twins could spend 17.78M on draftees and then pay roughly a $635k fine on the overage. Beyond 5% (17.78M for the Twins) the penalties become future draft picks, which is why nobody has ever done that.