ESPN publishes 2026 MLB ABS tracker

ESPN published an updated 2026 Major League Baseball ABS challenge system tracker on May 23, adding a running set of rankings for batters, pitchers, catchers, teams and umpires. The page tracks how players and clubs have fared under the league’s new Automated Ball-Strike challenge format during the regular season. (espn.com) MLB began using the ABS challenge system in the majors in 2026 after the Joint Competition Committee approved it in September 2025. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) MLB’s own Baseball Savant dashboard showed 3,084 challenge attempts through May 21, with 1,642 overturned calls and 1,442 confirmed calls, for an overall overturn rate of 53%. The same dashboard listed batters at a 47% overturn rate and fielders — the category that includes pitcher- and catcher-initiated challenges — at 59%. (espn.com) ### What exactly is ESPN tracking? ESPN’s tracker is a season-long leaderboard built around the ABS challenge system, ranking participants by challenge outcomes across the 2026 season. The page description says it ranks batters, pitchers, catchers, teams and umpires throughout the MLB season. (espn.com) May 23 is the latest update referenced in the story prompt, and the tracker is presented as a current-season snapshot rather than a one-day report. That makes it a standings-style page for one of MLB’s newest in-game rule changes. ### How does the ABS challenge system work in games? (baseballsavant.mlb.com) MLB said the ABS challenge system began with the 2026 season and uses the same Hawk-Eye tracking technology that powers Statcast. Only batters and pitchers or catchers can initiate a challenge, while managers, coaches and other players cannot. Each team starts with two challenges, according to Baseball Savant’s rules summary. (espn.com) A team that is wrong twice loses its ability to challenge for the rest of the first nine innings, though teams start each extra inning with a challenge regardless of whether they exhausted them earlier. ### What do the latest league-wide numbers show? Baseball Savant’s regular-season dashboard showed 3,084 attempts through May 21, with 53% of challenged calls overturned. (espn.com) That figure gives a league-wide baseline for the ESPN tracker’s individual and team rankings. The same MLB data showed 1,429 batter-initiated attempts, of which 672 were overturned, and 1,655 fielder-initiated attempts, of which 970 were overturned. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) In other words, fielders were succeeding more often than batters in the regular season data available as of May 21. ### Why are teams, catchers and umpires all on the same tracker? ESPN’s format reflects how the rule spreads responsibility across several participants. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) Batters can challenge called strikes, while pitchers and catchers can challenge called balls, so the system naturally creates separate leaderboards by role. Umpires are included because every challenge also becomes a scored review of a plate call. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) That gives the tracker a second function: it is both a player-and-team leaderboard and a public record of how often challenged calls are being overturned. ### When did MLB decide to bring ABS to the majors? (baseballsavant.mlb.com) Major League Baseball announced on Sept. 23, 2025, that the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system had been approved for major league play by a vote of the Joint Competition Committee. MLB said at the time that the format would be used in spring training, regular-season and postseason games beginning in 2026. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) April 1, 2026, marked the early regular-season phase of the system’s first major league campaign, and MLB.com separately began cataloging ABS “firsts” once the season started. ESPN’s tracker is part of that broader effort by media and league platforms to quantify how teams and players are adapting to the rule. (espn.com) ### Where can readers follow the next updates? ESPN’s tracker remains live on ESPN.com and is designed as a rolling leaderboard for the 2026 season. MLB’s Baseball Savant ABS dashboard also continues to update regular-season totals, challenge rates and team and player performance. (mlb.com) Baseball Savant’s current dashboard already lists team-level batting challenge results such as Minnesota with 67 challenges and Texas at a 62% success rate in the snapshot available on May 23. Those figures will continue to move as more regular-season games are played. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) (espn.com) (mlb.com)