CHICAGO — For the second season in a row, Carson Kelly is having a hot start at the plate. It’s not quite the Barry Bonds-esque power output he had last April, but six weeks into the season, Kelly has a 124 wRC+, rarely strikes out and is taking a lot of walks.
It’s not his bat, though, that has caught everyone’s attention. It’s what he’s doing behind the plate. With the advent of the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system, Kelly has emerged as an early star.
The data is new and understanding what is sustainable and what really matters isn’t entirely clear. Still, of catchers who have challenged at least 10 pitches (Kelly has challenged 21), Kelly’s 90.5 percent success rate is the best in baseball.
“Oh really?” Kelly said, clearly unaware that he’s a standout in this area. “Oh, I guess that’s good.”
It is!
Whether it is a long-term skill is still unclear. It will take more games to really figure out what is sticky. Like framing before it, clubs are still learning the nuances of this skill — and whether they believe it really is a skill or trends more toward randomness.
Manager Craig Counsell has been very hesitant to assume that a few games or weeks of success is a real signal of a player being a standout in this area. He’s right to be careful, as this is new to most everyone.
As a team, the Cubs are generally pretty good at challenging and are fifth in baseball with a 58.5 percent success rate, per info gathered from taptochallenge.com. Kelly is the star of the group with his success behind the plate. As a veteran who understands the strike zone, it does make sense that he would be good.
“I’ve been back there for a lot of pitches,” Kelly said.
But it’s more than just knowing the zone.
“I think Carson’s got a good understanding of the game situations,” Counsell said. “I don’t know how you practice to be good at that.”
“I’m pretty strategic with when to use them,” Kelly said. “Situation, certainty, there’s a lot of aspects that go into it. It’s about knowing the zone and knowing when to take chances and when not to.”
Kelly said there were a lot of discussions on the topic in spring training and they picked the brains of players who had recently been in the minors and had experience with ABS.
At first, Kelly said, he was “timid,” asking himself the “do I or don’t I?” question on every close call. But that’s what spring training is for.
“To his credit, he was just feeling the system out as much as anything,” Counsell said. “We get feedback every single day so you know the ones you missed. I think he’s just done a good job of taking in all the feedback when you catch and having a good feel for it.”
That feedback was key for Kelly, who said players get a detailed report on missed opportunities after each game.
“Should we have been more aggressive or not?” Kelly said. “It’s hard when it’s just the eye test. You have a split second to make a decision. You take in the whole situation of the game, and if it’s right there, you gotta do it if it’s close. There’s a lot of strategy of whether you have two (challenges) or one. Do you use them more on defense than offense? You could go on for days coming up with scenarios.”
There was a lot to take in, but his confidence quickly grew.
“Once I did it in spring training and realized that it was really something we could use, I just continued to have discussions on when the right time was,” Kelly said. “With multiple guys on base? Blatant miss, you gotta do it, right? Even if it’s the first or second inning. So it’s a lot.”
Kelly has flipped eight at-bats that turned into strikeouts and has eliminated three would-be walks. In the grand scheme of things, those are big shifts. At minimum, it saves a pitcher a few pitches. Beyond that, it could keep runs off the board and even add a win or two to a team’s total. Exactly how impactful this is and how much data we need to identify the true ABS stars are yet to be known, but so far, Kelly is standing out.
“It’s still, for me, too early to tell you if we can assign skill to this,” Counsell said. “But Carson’s off to a hot start.”