Yankees' Failed ABS Challenges a Real Issue After Thursday's Loss

The Yankees' bats are fully under the microscope as the offense continues to spearhead their recent skid. The woes of Ryan McMahon and Randal Grichuk have many looking for answers elsewhere, while Aaron Boone's maddening refusal to use Ben Rice against lefties also adds to the current main areas of frustration.

However, New York has a sneaky, ugly trend going under the radar that has to be fixed: hitter ABS challenges.

On Thursday, the Yankees saw both of their challenges used up by the second pitch of the first inning. Both were failed, leaving NY without this tool in its back pocket after the Angels started the game hot, and they put a spotlight on a growing issue Boone cannot let continue.

Yankees now lead league in failed hitter challenges, adding to offensive problems

Shortstop Jazz Chisholm was the first offender during the series finale against LA, immediately challenging a very-close third pitch in just the second inning. New York was down 2-1 at the time and already had two outs. It was a simple 1-1 count as well.

Tough ABS challenge for Jazz, who has challenged five pitches this season and only gotten one correct pic.twitter.com/FCjd5IjNI4
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) April 16, 2026

Yet, Chisholm called for review, and was quickly proven wrong. That left the Yanks down a challenge, and used in an inning that was already a lost cause. This isn't even to mention the fact it was Chisholm's fifth use of this system already and his fourth failed review.

Considering he entered Thursday batting .185, it is a major misuse of resources for these challenges to be spent on his current at-bats when he's already contributing little on that front. And given his four fails now tie for tops in MLB, this is a red flag being made clear as day to Boone and the staff in terms of how much freedom Chisholm is being given in this area.

To make matters worse against LA, Trent Grisham began the third inning with a challenge, right after seeing Chisholm lose his. Grisham also was proven wrong, taking both challenges off the board incredibly early in the contest. He even had an entire at-bat (it was only 0-0) still to go, again reinforcing the Yankees' problematic shoot-first mentality with this asset that can be used for genuinely game-changing calls.

Now New York is tied for the MLB lead in failed challenges after Thursday's debacle with 16. Sure, the club does have 13 wins on that front, but its 45% win percentage is a bottom-five number across the majors.

Making this aggressiveness with hitting challenges even worse is the fact defensive reviews have proved much more fruitful to this point. Entering Thursday, a whopping 60% of fielder reviews were overturned, compared to just 48% for hitters. That's incredibly important considering both share the same pool, so a hitting challenge's failure comes at the expense of the more likely overturn area.

Empire Sports Media's Ryan Garcia notes that catcher challenges are yielding a positive Run Value, while hitter ones are producing a negative across teams. The early part of the season showed significantly more runs gained when challenging in high-leverage situations (0.26) versus low ones (0.05) as well, based on FanGraphs' review.

All teams have a negative Run Value on hitter challenges and a positive Run Value on catcher challenges.

I think teams who don't correct and start dialing back hitter challenges to a select few elite hitters will fall behind the curve
— Ryan Garcia (@RyanGarciaESM) April 16, 2026

This leaves Boone with some very actionable items. Banning hitter challenges early in games without scoring potential is obvious. Keeping at least one challenge on standby for the seventh inning or later also feels crucial for the calls that could truly decide a matchup, even if being on the wrong end of a decision before that is necessary.

Limiting hitter challenges to a select few is also something Boone should do, as Chisholm is setting a dangerous example by being allowed to rack up review losses without any repercussions.

The best teams figure out how maximize the margins, and given how flat NY has gone in the first month of the season, it has zero room for unnecessary mistakes being repeated on the challenge front.

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