The Opener: Scott, Brewers, MLBTR Chat

Well, look at batting stances across the history of the game. Look at Ricky Henderson, Jeff Bagwell and Albert Pujols, and Pete Rose. All of those players utilize a stance that lowers their center of gravity in varying ways. Henderson had a crouch, Pujols pinched his knees inward and Bagwell outward. Rose really went low with a deep knee bend and a lean.

They do it to narrow the strike zone, to take away the high strike. But the ABS calls balls and strikes based on your measurements, knees to letters standing prone. Well Rose would bend his knees and lean over and dropped his strike zone at least a couple inches.

The ABS is going to call that high strike every time, if it works like they say it works. So now Rose is at a disadvantage. He can’t use his batting stance anymore because pitchers are going to exploit him with the high fastball, and if the ump doesn’t call, the ABS will.

So how do you pitch Rose? I throw nothing but high fastballs, the umps aren’t going to call it a strike but I’ll tap my hat and the ABS will call it a strike. I won the challenge, I keep my challenges. I’m going to throw him another high fastball. “Ball, says the ump.” Skubal taps his hat. “Strike two,” says the robot ump.

So Rose, he says, “I can’t hit like this anymore, I’m getting blown away by the high fastball.” He ultimately has to start raising his center of gravity, standing upright, to hit the high ABS strike.

What you end up getting after many years is a uniform hitting approach. It will looked exactly like Ohtani’s stance, he has the perfect ABS approach. You won’t get any more Pete Rose, any more Ricky Henderson, no more Pujols, no more Bagwell.

Every hitter coming up through the ranks will be taught how to hit upright and prone because it’s the only way to maximize your bat coverage of the ABS strike zone.

Of course you could get some freaks that somehow club the high ABS strike but it won’t be the same as it is with the umps, because the umps use their best judgment, they don’t use a programmatic rule set. Rose got called out on a lot of high strikes. He put a lot of them through the middle too but it was fair, the umps made it fair. He could use the crouch because he might get an ump who isn’t calling the high strike today and he could go 3-4 with a walk because he’s going to hit everything low in the zone. But that will be eliminated with the ABS and every hitter will be hitting tall in time.

It will lead to a very robotic looking game. No style, no variance, and that’s what makes the game so challenging, that variance from day to day. If you get the same strike zone every day, these hitters they are great, they will hit a ton eventually. You won’t be able to put it past them, and it will be boring.