r/Dodgers • u/yli16 Max Muncy • 1d ago
Last year, I thought ABS would really help Will Smith and Yamamoto, especially since Will is one of the worst framers. But after seeing these numbers, I’m pretty disappointed.
Out of 19 incorrect calls that could have been challenged, Will let 16 of them go. In comparison, Contreras only let 6 go. Contreras doesn’t have a particularly good challenge success rate, but at least he knows when he should challenge a call.
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u/AlarmingBranch1 Back-2-Back Champs 1d ago
As a whole, Dodgers utilized the ABS challenge pretty poorly all season.
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u/Round_Stranger_408 7h ago
Pages does/did many things well, but his ABS awareness is insanely poor.
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u/notyouraveragedoge Yoshinobu Yamamoto 1d ago
This is a very limited sample size and I’m going off of my memory here, but Contreras seemed to do very well on challenges during the NLCS. He correctly challenged in a low leverage spot during Game 4 bottom of the 1st inning. The players who do that are either confident in the strike zone, or named Andy Pages.
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u/AltruisticStomach620 1d ago
It's funny because if you paid a little attention to what was going on with the Brewers during the regular season Contreras was absolutely getting shit on for dumb challenges. I mean, he was hovering at around 50 some percent success rate and was just challenging EVERYTHING. Then something seemed to have clicked for him in September after 150 some challenges and he brought the success together with his offense into the postseason. So he was absolutely at Pages level before but somehow managed to turn it around.
So the lesson here is that maybe Andy also needs about 150 challenges before he has a chance to turn it around.
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u/BruitNoise Mookie Betts 1d ago
true, That Patrick Bailey guy looks like he doesn't look both ways before crossing a busy road and just Leeroy Jenkins down the middle of the street.
His team might be going to the World Series.
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u/TheBigJew 1d ago
Our challenges were atrocious. We should be embarrassed
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u/BruitNoise Mookie Betts 1d ago
It was really just experienced old players vs a young team that got better.
Brewers were always a good team, it's not like the Giants or some miracle that happened overnight. They were pretty much ready to go far but we played better last year because Ohtani was 100% instead of 25%, but also our team was different. Ohtani made history with 10K, 3HR, it was basically the moment when Brewers knew they had to change everything about how to play for 2026. completely different animal.
We Swept the Brewers in 2025 but the score wasn't insane for game 1 and 3.
Game 1: 2 - 1 (not special but snell was cool)
Game 2: 5 - 1 (Yamamoto was cool)
Game 3: 3 - 1 (not insane)
Game 4: 5 - 1 (this was a cool game)So looking back, yeah, Ohtani and Yamamoto did something special but our offense was still just doing low run games on the other days.
Now if we were doing 7 or 8 run games, that's a different story but we didn't, the Brewers were doing that this year and if they had the same set up of 2026 in 2025, They would have beat us last year (except for game 4)
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u/DeathClaw9999 Shobae Chadtani 1d ago
Daaaaaaamn. Will gotta work on that during the off-season, and maybe Yoshi needs to challenge himself sometimes like Shohei.
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u/ResortOk3776 Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
Yoshi is definitely a better fit with catchers other than Smith.
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u/ResortOk3776 Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
Contreras in first place and Smith in 16th!? I am not surprised at all. The difference between them was plain to see in this series.
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u/rodrigo_c91 Vin Scully 1d ago
I will say though, Contreras was dying on the dumbest challenges and being “right” by centimeters. It made him look like a genius. But he was always gambling.
Just saying…
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u/mossimo654 Vin Scully 1d ago
Is this just playoffs? I think it is. If so that’s such a small sample size to be doing “runs above average” and stuff.
Although obviously we had some shit challenges and Contreras was very good the last game.
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u/yli16 Max Muncy 1d ago
Just playoffs. Small sample size. Correct.
However, Mookie struck out looking in the first inning of Game 1 against the Braves, but he immediately adjusted and became willing to challenge calls when he knew a pitch was a ball. Meanwhile, Will still hasn’t made any adjustments, even after several games of poor ABS challenges.
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u/Bruinrogue Clayton Kershaw 1d ago
Will's vision has been abysmal both as a batter and catcher.
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u/AltruisticStomach620 1d ago
??? As a batter?? He challenged twice in the regular season, lost one, won one. Challenged twice in the postseason, lost one, won one. Regular season he had one of the highest walk to K ratios on the team, as usual. And as usual, a very low chase rate. Postseason didn't have as many walks as usual but really didn't have as many chances if you look at how he was being pitched vs some of the other guys and still ended up with a middle of the pack K% that was largely brought down by the fact that he had a tough NLDS but was back to usual K% in the NLCS.
Not sure what else would qualify vision as a batter.
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u/theangryburrito LA 1d ago
We need to take the burden of challenging off players. Their job is to play the game, not officiate the game. Automate it entirely.
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1d ago
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u/darkmatterhunter Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
So they still want the ability to challenge? Or umps to keep their jobs?
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u/BruitNoise Mookie Betts 1d ago
I want to be fair but EVERYBODY played bad except for Kyle and Diaz but even that isn't comparable to what the Brewers did.
Brewers put 100% of their effort into it, Dodgers put 50%.
But even if the Dodgers didn't do well, we made it to the NLCS so not really worried about next year but figure out how to improve (cough cough get younger players that have proven to be excellent)
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u/Psychological_Fly627 Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
If he was better with the challenges our starters definitely would have done better. Not sure if we would have won the series with the limp bats, but at least it would have gone to maybe 6 or 7 games.
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u/rdev009 1d ago
David Vassegh said on an interview on AM570 today that two players from different teams texted him and said Yamamoto was tipping his pitches.
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u/ResortOk3776 Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
Please let me know if there is any Yama’s footage to back that up.
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u/SilentSpader Back-2-Back Champs 1d ago
All our pitchers need to start using a bigger glove or shrink head
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u/onlymostlydeadd LA 1d ago
Being a good challenger means knowing the zone extremely well. Will has never been able to feel the zone as a catcher. Watch his framing, he drags balls out of the zone. He’ll frame it vertically when it’s still 2 inches off horizontally.
Abs can’t save him because it still requires him to be a good catcher lol
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u/AltruisticStomach620 1d ago edited 1d ago
Data shows he was pretty good at knowing the zone at the beginning of the season. Was not able to get back to it after the injury. I don't think you can correlate framing technique with poor ABS. Salvador Perez sucks at framing, arguably far worse than Will because he's been bad at it for a while now, but he has a really high ABS success rate. Same with Realmuto. He used to be good at framing but the metrics haven't loved him in recent years but he has a ABS success rate even higher than Salvy's.
Will's ABS success percentage was close enough to theirs at the beginning of the year. It really was the injury that got things off track.
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u/donkeyjr Shohei Ohtani 1d ago
he was pretty dam good before he injure
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u/CeeDotA Los Angeles Dodgers 1d ago
At framing? No, Will Smith has always been a poor framing catcher.
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u/Intelligent_Top_328 1d ago
Why can't we just use abs? It gets the call right. Take away balls and strikes from them. It will happen eventually.
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u/Dodgers-ModTeam 1d ago
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u/LADojerz Will Smith 18h ago
Does this take account how many challenges are remaining? Because many times batters use them in stupidly moments.
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u/baribigbird06 Clayton Kershaw 1d ago
It’s been a rough year for Will, between the bat, continued poor framing, and even his caught stealing numbers declining drastically too. Maybe he should take more reps at 1B next year with Freddie aging and let Dalton catch more games.
It’s a shame because there was a debate to be had whether or not he was on a future HOF trajectory after last year.
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u/Dr-Acula8472 Back-2-Back Champs 1d ago
He was injured most of this year, and before the injury he was doing well at ABS challenges. Jury's still out.
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u/Enough_Presence8063 1d ago
Nothing worked in our favor this series. People said that brewers team was too good but a lot of it has to do with dodgers failing at everything. Can't even blame will smith when we legit lost as a team
Honestly the vibe was all bad when we won two back to back. It hasn't been the same
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u/Public_Psychology173 1d ago edited 1d ago
He was good before the injury. I honestly felt like he was challenging the wrong stuff. The umps were accurate when it came to the top and bottom of the zone while pretty off on the sides. Sadly Will constantly kept challenging the former. Lol I wonder if it has to do with his kneck injury and that playing a huge role with seeing the zone. I wonder if Dave didnt let the pitchers challenge. Pretty confident in Rushing next year. It would pretty funny if Ohtani has a better glove than JDP and move him to the outfield and let JDP DH.