00:00The Washington Nationals have had a pretty good season.
00:02They've been more competitive than people think.
00:04Their lineup is way better than people thought it was going to be.
00:08Starting pitching has not been great.
00:10Bullpen has been dreadful.
00:12But overall, you will have taken this beginning of the season
00:16through 29 games sight unseen.
00:1813-16, hovering around .500.
00:21On the road, they've been outstanding.
00:22Home, 3-10, has been a struggle.
00:24The one area, though, where the Nationals have been terrible,
00:30and I mean terrible, is challenging pitches
00:34in the automated balls and strike system.
00:38They are the worst in Major League Baseball at this juncture.
00:42You look at winning percentage in baseball,
00:45they have gotten all of 40% of their challenges correct.
00:49They have been right 21 times.
00:51They have been wrong 32 times in 53 challenges.
00:56There are a few teams that have been wrong more often,
00:58but they challenge way more.
01:00Like, do you guys realize the Chicago White Sox,
01:02the Minnesota Twins, these teams are challenging 80 times already.
01:05There are teams that don't even have 40 challenges
01:07in Major League Baseball yet.
01:10So there's clubs that are way more aggressive,
01:12don't really have a philosophy,
01:13and most of those teams aren't hitting in a very good clip.
01:16But the Nationals, man, they just have not figured out the challenge system.
01:23And what is staggering to me is the amount of times
01:27they've gotten it wrong from behind the plate as catchers.
01:30Spencer Nussbaum, who covers the Nationals,
01:32longtime Washington Post writer,
01:34they blew up their sports section for some inexplicable reason.
01:36They've subsequently hired some writers back.
01:38I have no idea what the hell they're doing.
01:40I don't subscribe anymore.
01:41The people that are writing there, God bless you.
01:43I love you.
01:44It's not your fault.
01:45But now Nussbaum writes for The Athletic,
01:47like everybody else in town that wrote for The Post.
01:49Anyway, he wrote a piece that was really good
01:53about the Nats catchers saying they've gotten so much better framing
01:57and their defensive work has improved exponentially
01:59from last year statistically.
02:00It's been one of the huge jumps organizationally with this new staff,
02:05Ruiz's numbers, framing up pitches,
02:07Drew Millis and the way he's received as well,
02:10that they're actually tricking themselves.
02:12Maybe there's something to that.
02:13I don't know.
02:16But when you're a pitcher and you challenge,
02:19you're probably going to be wrong a lot.
02:20You've got the worst vantage point.
02:22First, you're 60 feet, six inches away.
02:24Second, most of the time you're falling off one direction
02:27or the other away from home plate.
02:29You're not really staring the entire time at the pitch necessarily
02:32with the best angle.
02:34Okay?
02:34So that's why pitchers, by and large,
02:36have said I'm not going to be the one challenging,
02:37and it's actually very rare.
02:38It does not happen that often.
02:41Batters have a pretty good feel, you'd think, for the strike zone,
02:44and the percentage in Major League Baseball
02:47has been much higher for batters challenging than pitchers.
02:50But as you'd imagine, the group that knows best is the catcher.
02:54You have the best seat.
02:56You are there at the plate.
02:58You're sitting right in front of the guy calling ball or strike.
03:01You're receiving the pitch.
03:03You can see.
03:03Is it over the plate or is it not?
03:05Is it in that little invisible box of which you know exactly where it is
03:09or is it not?
03:11And so the catching challenge rate around Major League Baseball
03:15is very, very high.
03:17That's where the majority of the challenges come from.
03:19You won't be surprised.
03:20That's where the best winning percentages come from.
03:23The Detroit Tigers, as an example,
03:25have challenged 21 pitches from the catching position.
03:28They're 19 for 21 because I'm a catcher,
03:31and I can see the strike zone,
03:33so I know if a pitch was a strike or not.
03:35The Washington Nationals somehow
03:38have gotten more wrong than right from the catching position.
03:4331 times their catchers have challenged,
03:45and more times than not,
03:46the catcher did not know that the pitch that they challenged
03:50was correct by the umpire.
03:53Crazy to me.
03:55They've got to clean that up.
03:56That is something to get fixed.
03:58Paul Toboni and his staff have got to get on that one,
04:00and I'm sure they will.
04:02But that is the one area so far
04:03where you look at the Nats and you go,
04:06with all the information and all the data
04:08and all the things that they're doing well,
04:10this should be one of those things that comes pretty easily.
04:13And what I would do is there's a couple of guys
04:15that have just lost their privileges.
04:17It's not even about how often you've gotten it right or wrong.
04:20Like, James Wood's percentage on challenges
04:21has got to be close to zero.
04:23He has almost always been wrong
04:26when he's challenged pitches this year.
04:27But to his credit, at 6'7", with a massive strike zone,
04:31it's normally within a half-inch, half of a baseball, quarter-inch
04:35that, when challenged,
04:37the result is borderline.
04:39Most of the pitch is out of the strike zone,
04:41but a little bit is in.
04:42And he kind of gets screwed over by that.
04:44I can live with that.
04:46Nassim Nunez, who hits 114 anyway,
04:49and gets on base 20% of the time,
04:52is challenging pitches in the middle of the strike zone.
04:55What are we doing?
04:57K. Barrett-Ruiz, you're not allowed to challenge anymore as a hitter.
05:00You can't do it as a catcher.
05:01I know you can't do it as a hitter.
05:04But if you're one of these guys like Nassim,
05:05when I see twice you challenge pitches that are middle-middle
05:08or completely off the plate,
05:11done.
05:11Gone.
05:12No longer.
05:13And oh, by the way,
05:14the other thing would be,
05:15you know, it's like my parents wouldn't let us stay home alone
05:19until we were a certain age,
05:20or they wouldn't let us,
05:21you know, take a phone or something to school
05:24unless we had proven or done all these other things right,
05:27homework and everything else.
05:28Unless you're hitting 225,
05:31you don't get to challenge.
05:33Average is a bad metric.
05:34Let's go OPS.
05:35So Nassim, this isn't going to work for you either.
05:38My lover bee.
05:39I mean, I love this dude.
05:41Stolen base maven,
05:42elite defender.
05:43But just from a hitting standpoint,
05:45anything you give me is a plus.
05:46You're my guy.
05:47Best smile on the team.
05:49Energizer bunny.
05:49Never challenge again.
05:51Not once.
05:52As long as I live,
05:53as long as you live,
05:53we don't get to challenge anymore.
05:54We've lost our privileges.
05:56But if you don't have an OPS over,
05:59let's make it low.
06:00Let's go 625.
06:02You do not get to challenge.
06:04Once you get to 625,
06:06you want to request a meeting in my office?
06:08We can sit down and talk about it.
06:10But until that's your OPS,
06:12no more challenges.
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