Rising to the Challenge
During yesterday’s combined no-hitter against the Rangers, you may have seen Cam Smith tap his helmet after a first pitch slider towards the top of the zone in the to of the sixth inning, and thought, “Cam Smith seems to use the ABS challenge system a lot.” A few seconds later, when ABS confirmed the pitch was indeed a strike, perhaps you also thought, “Cam Smith seems to be wrong a lot.”
At least, that’s what was going through my mind, so I decided to look into it. Going into yesterday, Cam Smith had challenged 14 times. Yesterday brings him to 15. Only 2 hitters in the majors have initiated more challenges than Cam: Gary Sanchez (16) and Sal Stewart (19).
Yesterday’s failed challenge brings him to 6 for 15 on the year, a 40% success rate. That’s not great, but it’s also not that far off of the major league average. MLB as a whole has a 46.8% success rate (704 for 1503) on batter initiated ABS challenges.
Who else is challenging as much as Cam? Very few MLB players. Only 17 players had 12 or more challenges on the year through 5/24/26. Out of curiosity, I looked into who they were to see if there were any trends to extract.
| Player | Team | Challenges | Overturns | Success % | Z-Swing% | Years Experience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sal Stewart | CIN | 19 | 11 | 57.8 | 71.3 | 1 |
| Gary Sanchez | MIL | 16 | 7 | 43.8 | 52.8 | 11 |
| Nolan Schanuel | LAA | 15 | 5 | 33.3 | 64.4 | 3 |
| Kyle Schwarber | PHI | 14 | 9 | 64.3 | 63.8 | 12 |
| Cam Smith | HOU | 14 | 6 | 42.8 | 63.7 | 2 |
| Jose Altuve | HOU | 13 | 9 | 69.2 | 63.7 | 16 |
| James Wood | WSN | 13 | 3 | 23.1 | 56.2 | 3 |
| Marcell Ozuna | PIT | 12 | 6 | 50.0 | 59.4 | 14 |
| Ronald Acuna Jr. | ATL | 12 | 4 | 33.3 | 71.4 | 9 |
| Bryan Reynolds | PIT | 12 | 6 | 50.0 | 66.9 | 8 |
| Mark Vientos | NYM | 12 | 7 | 58.3 | 76.3 | 4 |
| Maikel Garcia | KCR | 12 | 9 | 75.0 | 55.1 | 4 |
| Jose Caballero | NYY | 12 | 7 | 58.3 | 66.1 | 4 |
| Davis Schneider | TOR | 12 | 9 | 75.0 | 56.8 | 4 |
| Zach Neto | LAA | 12 | 5 | 41.7 | 71.3 | 4 |
| Luke Keaschall | MIN | 12 | 5 | 41.7 | 59.0 | 2 |
| Munetaka Murakami | CHW | 12 | 7 | 58.3 | 64.5 | 1 |
| TOTAL | – | 224 | 115 | 51.3 | 63.7 | 6 (average) |
These 17 guys are responsible for 14.9% of all the batter initiated challenges in MLB. Collectively, they have a 51.3% success rate. The rest of the majors, when you subtract these 17 players, succeed about 46.1% of the time. So the top 17 seem like they’re better at it, but when you break it down, 9 players are and 8 aren’t.
Can we draw any conclusions: The short answer is no.
The sample sizes are too small, since ABS is so new. Maybe at the end of a season or two, you could get a profile of what kind of players challenges, and what kind of player is usually correct, but with this small a data set, it’s all over the place. Seasoned veterans like Altuve and Schwarber like to challenge, but so do second year guys like Keaschall and Smith. A rookie leads the majors in batter initiated ABS challenges.
Does Z-Swing% predict ABS challenge success? If you recognize strikes well enough to swing, maybe that means a hitter knows the zone very well. Z-Swing% isn’t a perfect indicator of recognizing a strike. You might recognize something to be a strike, but not swing because you there’s less than 2 strikes and it’s not a pitch you can do anything with. You might swing at a majority of strikes but only because you’re also swinging at a lot of balls just outside the zone too.
I thought about comparing O-Swing% as well, and the value difference between Z-Swing% and O-Swing %, but it became evident that it would be a waste of time until more data is available.
All we can say right now is that Cam Smith and Jose Altuve challenge frequently, and with more than double the challenges of their next closest teammate, it looks likely that these two will continue to be the leading ABS challengers on the Astros.
| Player | Challenges | Overturns | Success % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cam Smith | 15 | 6 | 40.0 |
| Jose Altuve | 13 | 9 | 69.2 |
| Christian Walker | 6 | 4 | 66.7 |
| Isaac Paredes | 5 | 5 | 100.0 |
| Zach Cole | 4 | 3 | 75.0 |
| Carlos Correa | 3 | 2 | 66.7 |
| Christian Vazquez | 3 | 1 | 33.3 |
| Cesar Salazar | 2 | 2 | 100.0 |
| Taylor Trammell | 2 | 1 | 50.0 |
| Joey Loperfido | 2 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Yordan Alvarez | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Shay Whitcomb | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Zach Dezenzo | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Jeremy Pena | 1 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Brice Matthews | 1 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Nick Allen | 1 | 0 | 0.0 |
| TOTAL | 61 | 36 | 59.0 |
It’s worth noting that so far, the 2026 Astros with a 59.0% success rate, fares better than the MLB average for batter-initiated challenges. In fact, 36 overturned calls in batter initiated challenges is the most in the majors. The Astros’ 61 challenges are third only to The Twins (73) and the Guardians (62). Their 59.0% success rate is also third, behind the Royals (60.4%) and Rangers (59.1%)
| 2026 Astros | Value | MLB Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Batter Initiated Challenges | 61 | 1 |
| Batter Initiated Challenges Overturned | 36 | 3 |
| Batter Initiated Challenge Success % | 59.0 | 3 |
Astros @ Texans Game Information and Gamethread Details
The Astros try to make it 5 wins in a row tonight. They’ve been slowly creeping up in the standings, and with the Athletics’ and Twins’ losses yesterday, they now sit 3.5 games back in the division, and 2.5 games back from the 3rd wild card position.
Jason Alexander makes his second start of the season for the Astros. His first was a last minute spot start after Lance McCullers, the scheduled starter, was sent to the IL with shoulder inflammation. He responded to the call with 6 innings of shutout ball, striking out 4 and walking 1, and allowing 4 hits. The results were better than his stuff and location would lead you to believe, but hey, 6 scoreless frames is 6 scoreless frames. Just ask Tatsuya Imai.
The Rangers send Jack Leiter to the mound. The last time Jack Leiter pitched against the Astros, he threw 7 innings, and allowed only 1 run, a home run by Isaac Paredes. Unfortunately for Leiter, Spencer Arrighetti took a no-hitter into the 8th inning, and the Astros won 2-0. In 10 starts, Leiter is 1-4 on the season, with a 1.390 WHIP, 9.9 K/9 and 3.8 BB/9.
The Rangers have now lost 4 games in a row and sit just one game ahead of the Astros at 24-29.
This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.
The game will be broadcast at 7:05 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
We hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game! The turnout has been amazing on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads. It’s been a blast as the Astros seem to be finding their footing on the season.
These were sarcastic first and second inning comments from yesterday’s combined no-hitter, which proved to be prophetic:
Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .
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If you’ve participated in game threads on other Astros sites in the past, you will probably see a lot of familiar names. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)
Challenge proficiency involves two factors: (1) Success rate; and (2) Situational decision to challenge. Situation may be the most important. The run value of a successful challenge depends on the situation (for example, 3-2 count with runners on base has very high value). There is some luck involved in the first factor, but there shouldn’t be luck involved in the second factor. You can prepare in advance for knowing when to challenge. From what I’ve watched, Cam is bad at both factors. He has a lot of unsuccessful challenges. But that wouldn’t be so bad if he selected appropriate situations to make the challenge. I’ve just seen too many situations when he challenged early in the count or with no runners on base. We had a recent game, where the leverage of the pitch decision was low and Cam used the Astros last challenge in the 6th or 7th inning on a pitch location that wasn’t really close. Later in a close game, the Astros’ catcher was unable to challenge pitches on 3-2 counts which would have flipped a walk to a strike out.
Yeah I was going to get into that a little, but there was already so little to extract from the small data sets that I didn’t want to spend any more time on it.
another thing i left out was that fangraphs also reports wB-Rvw (total run value of batter-intiated reviews) but when you look at it, all wB-Rvw’s are positive. Presumably because the way they’re calling it is that there’s value added if you get a strike turned to a ball, but that there’s no value lost if the strike remains a strike.
But there IS value lost. You’ve lost a challenge, and like you said, there may be times down the line where you need that in an important situation.
What should be valuated is the run expectancy of three identical situations, but with 0, 1 and 2 challenges remaining. those shouldn’t be equal. But based on the fact that no negative wB-Rvw’s are reported, I think Fangraphs is treating them as equal.
Edit: forgot to include image