PIT @ CIN
Home plate: Junior Valentine
“The zone shrank when the pitchers needed it most.”
What this shows — how Junior Valentine called the 153 pitches that were taken (no swing), graded against the tracked rulebook strike zone. He got 139 right. Below, only his misses are plotted, alongside every pitch the ABS (Automated Ball-Strike System) reviewed on a challenge.
The zone, as he called it
The calls that moved the game
- 1+0.39▼1 · 2-2 strike called ball
Elly De La Cruz vs Braxton Ashcraft - 2+0.30▼4 · 3-1 strike called ball
Sal Stewart vs Braxton Ashcraft - 3-0.30▲9 · 3-1 ball called strike
Ryan O'Hearn vs Connor Phillips
Run impact from the count run-value table: a missed strike three is worth far more than one on 3-0.
ABS — the Automated Ball-Strike System
2 pitches went to the robots · 2 overturned (ump overruled) · 0 upheld (ump confirmed). This is the ABS system’s own measurement — Hawk-Eye optical ball-tracking, not our model.
- 1Henry Davis — ump said ball, robot ruled strike: overturned.
- 2Ke'Bryan Hayes — ump said strike, robot ruled ball: overturned.
Our tracked-rulebook zone matched the ABS ruling on 2 of 2 — a zone-definition gap (ABS grades a standardized, height-based zone), not our error.