The New York Yankees and New York Mets played game two of this weekend’s Subway Series on Saturday at Citi Field, and the game was an MLB on Fox telecast with the network’s top crew of Joe Davis and John Smoltz on the call.

In the top of the sixth inning, Davis and Smoltz discussed the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, which Major League Baseball is using for the first time with the 2026 season.

As Davis explained, walk rates (specifically, unintentional walk rates) are at an all-time high because the ABS has shrunk the strike zone.

Davis then asked Smoltz, “Would you tweak the ABS zone, make it bigger in certain areas?”

“No,” Smoltz, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015 and won the NL Cy Young Award in 1996, responded. “I think lowering it gives hitters a chance with velocity down vs. velocity up. If that strike zone was higher, no chance.”

“That’s a spot where the zone has shrunk the most,” Davis said. “The top of the zone is three inches shorter than what umpires were calling last year.”

“We’ve already seen when you have the ability to fractionally touch the baseball across an electric strike zone, you see how much bigger it is, right?” Smoltz said. “Because if they didn’t lower it, imagine the top of the strike zone being that much bigger… And then you couple that with the ability to spin a baseball, top to bottom. Again, a ball for the longest time, and barely catching the back end of that strike zone. Hitters would have a hard time adjusting.”

“What is the answer then?” Davis asked. “Because I don’t think more walks and less swinging is good.”

“No, it’s not,” Smoltz responded. “The answer is, we’ve got to do a better job with our pitching. They’re just, guys aren’t ready. Like, they’re forced to the big leagues because of injuries. They’re forced to the big leagues because nobody pitches enough innings. And they’re just not prepared to be able to be out there long enough. Because the inability to command a secondary pitch is flawed, and the throw it super hard has never been greater. So, that’s the answer, but they may come after some rule changes.”

“But even to get it back to where it was the last couple years, when it was the same deal, right? Guys throwing hard, but not necessarily commanding it,” Davis said. “There’s got to be some kind of tweak we can make there to the ABS zone, no? That could at least get it back to where it was?”

“I mean, the only thing, east to west, not north to south,” Smoltz said. “So, if you wanted to expand it a little bit.”

Overall, the ABS has been well-received in its first two months of existence in MLB. The league will surely dig into the data and consider feedback regarding potential tweaks to the ABS for future seasons.

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