Baseball's new challenge system was supposed to be a safety net. For the Dodgers, it lasted exactly two pitches. Alex Call stepped in for his first at-bat of the game and somehow managed to burn through the club's entire allotment of ABS challenges before the first inning was even over, turning what should've been a tool for late-game justice into an early punchline.
Alex Call burned through both of the Dodgers' challenges on back-to-back pitches in the first inning https://t.co/d1Y5PWpRLr
For the uninitiated: MLB's ABS challenge system gives each team a limited number of chances per game to appeal a ball-strike call to the automated strike zone. Miss on the challenge, and it's gone for good — no matter what happens in the 9th inning of a one-run game. Call apparently didn't get the memo about rationing, going for broke twice in a row before the Dodgers had even settled into the dugout.
The baseball internet noticed immediately, and not kindly. Between the quick-trigger fingers and the fact that both challenges were burned on pitches that weren't particularly close, the reaction was less "tough beat" and more "why would you do that."
Alex Call lost ABS challenges on consecutive pitches....in the first inning. 😬 https://t.co/AIA9qII0iT
It's not even the first time this has happened this month — Randy Arozarena pulled the same trick for the Mariners just days earlier, burning both of Seattle's challenges two batters into a game on July 4. It's becoming an early trend of the ABS era: give hitters a shiny new toy, and some of them will use it up before they've even seen a full scouting report on the umpire's zone that day.
Call has carved out a real niche in L.A. since coming over from Washington in a trade last summer, sticking as a dependable reserve outfielder who chipped in during the Dodgers' World Series run. None of that reputation is in danger over one bad pair of challenges. But burning your team's only safety valve in the first inning, before a single close call actually matters, is the kind of moment that gets replayed all season — especially if the Dodgers end up needing a challenge in the 8th inning of a game they don't have one left to use.
The lesson here isn't complicated: the challenge system rewards patience, and patience is exactly what got skipped. Until players start treating these things like a resource instead of a reflex, expect more first-inning burns, more announcers making puns about "BS challenges," and more clips like this one making the rounds before the game is even out of the first.