Red Sox Respond To Craig Breslow Criticism, Win 4 ABS Challenges
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The Boston Red Sox are dead last in Major League Baseball when it comes to implementing the new ABS Challenge system. The team's critics have pointed out the fact that interim manager Chad Tracy should feel comfortable with the ABS because of his extensive time spent using it at the minor league level.
When Chris Curtis was able to land the Red Sox's Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow on WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show," he asked about the team's inexplicable struggles with the new rule.
"I think we got caught maybe in a situation where we were very focused on the right situations to challenge, that's what a lot of the conversations were about," Breslow said. "Making sure that when we use the challenge, we're kind of getting the most bang for our buck.
"I think what that did is it left a lot of opportunities to challenge on the table."
This strategy clearly was not working, as the Red Sox have the lowest total challenge success rate and the lowest amount of total challenges used in the entire league.
Breslow added that the team is actively reviewing and trying to improve on the slow start.
"There's kind of two buckets of situations where you want to challenge...," Breslow said. "The ones where balls are clearly strikes... You have to trust your instinct and your knowledge of the strike zone...
"I think those are the ones that we've been lacking. Just the overall number of challenges that we've made is too low."
The Red Sox must have gotten the message as they were exceptional in using their challenges during Sunday afternoon's 9-4 win over the Cleveland Guardians.
Carlos Narvaez challenged and overturned a pitch that would have been strike three in the fifth inning. It was the third successful challenge of the game for Boston. Later in the game, Narvaez got a ball call overturned to steal a strikeout for relief pitcher Greg Weissert.
The Red Sox won four challenges in total on the day, leading play-by-play announcer Dave O'Brien to dub it "the best day of the season for the Red Sox on ABS."
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