Baseball Eve!
2026 Starts Tomorrow...sorta
Welcome to 2026 đ
The Padres will open up exhibition play tomorrow afternoon at 12:10 PT here in Peoria against the Mariners. That means we areâdepending on when youâre actually reading thisâsomewhere around 24 hours away from actual baseball. The long winter is finally over.
While the actual first day of Spring may be about a month away and these games donât count in the standings, weâre not going to let any of that damper our enthusiasm for Cactus League play.
With a large handful of key players leaving for the WBC in early March, expect plenty of at-bats for those guys in these first several games. I would imagine weâll see many/most of the regular position players in there tomorrow.
Tony and I will have all the action for you on the radio (97.3 FM, of course) and there will be a video webcast accompanying things, as well. Weâre very excited and hope you are, too!
ABS!
As you almost certainly know by now, MLB has put the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) into play for the 2026 season. I am still unclear as to whether the âSâ in ABS stands for âStrikeâ or âSystem,â though I believe itâs the latter. That, of course, is very much not the point.
The point is that for the first time in Major League history, players will be able to use technology to challenge umpiresâ calls and potentially have them overturned.
The decision to go down this road was not reached lightly. Itâs been five or six years of planning and testing and tweaking (including a lot of action last Spring Training) to get us to this point and all signs point to the tech and the humans all being as ready as theyâll ever be.
All the MLB broadcasters had a chance to get on an ABS call with league officials yesterday and based on that and everything else we know, here are the basics as well as some of my own thoughts about the system:
Each team begins the game with two challenges
If you win a challenge, you retain it (so, theoretically, infinite challenges are possible)
If you lose a challenge, you obviously lose it
If a team is out of challenges after 9 innings, they get an additional challenge in the 10th. Same in the 11th and beyond (but if they DO have challenges, they donât receive an extra âbonusâ challenge).
Only the pitcher, catcher and hitter are able to challenge a pitch and they must do so pretty much immediately (exceptions being things like SB attempts) without any help from the dugout.
I would expect pitcher challenges to be VERY rare
I would expect most teams to hold their challenges for the 7th inning and beyond1
There will be no challenges with a position player on the mound2
The top and bottom of the ABS zone are a little smaller than what weâre used to, so the anticipation is that walks will tick up and strikeouts will tick down.
In Spring Training and Minor League testing, about 50% of challenged calls the last couple of years were overturned.
Every normal Spring Training game this year will use ABS, as will every regular season and postseason game. When a player challenges, the umpire will indicate who is challenging and then all eyes turn to the stadium video board where the fancy video animation will play, showing exactly where the pitch was relative to the strike zone.
Having only seen the system in action in the low-stakes environment of the Cactus League, I am incredibly anxious to check it out this regular season.
If youâre interested, hereâs a little Instagram video I made of some practice ABS action the Padres had yesterday:
Lotttttta Action
Not only did the Padres extend GM AJ Preller this week, but the Padresâ head of baseball operations kept extremely busy. In a three-day span earlier this week, Preller added:
OF/INF Nick Castellanos
RHP Griffin Canning
RHP GermĂĄn MĂĄrquez
RHP Walker Buehler3 and
INF Ty France
The rotation, which includes locks Nick Pivetta, Joe Musgrove and Michael King, along with front-runner Randy Vasquez, now sees a list of guys competing for work that includes JP Sears, Matt Waldron, Triston McKenzie, Marco Gonzales, and of course MĂĄrquez and Buehler (I donât put Canning on this list, because heâs not likely to be ready for Opening Day thanks to the Achillesâ injury that ended his 2025 season in late June).
In looking at the volume of arms there, perhaps it shouldnât have been a surprise this week that manager Craig Stammen suggested a six-man rotation is something thatâs potentially in play. Obviously effectiveness and attrition will help decide if thatâs a feasible option, but itâs felt to me like only a matter of time before a team decided to try and give that a true go. And with Musgrove returning from Tommy John surgery and King trying to bounce back from an injury-riddled campaign, thereâs definitely a lot of food for thought there. Iâm not sure that I would bet on it happening4, but certainly something to keep in mind and itâs fun to chew on.
For fun, hereâs a look at the first version of my broadcast notes for Castellanos as we prepare for tomorrowâs game:
Thank Yous
In the last newsletter, I mentioned that Iâd appreciate it if you passed the newsletter along to friends or family you thought might enjoy it and the response was really overwhelming. A ton of new people have hooked on in the last week, so welcome to all of you and thank you to everyone who helped spread the word!
Hope youâre able to tune in for a bit tomorrowâŠTony and I are both super pumped to get the season underway.
Happy Baseball, everyone!
Not in Spring Training, of course
Thank goodness
His career numbers against the Padres (7-1, 1.67) make this something of an automatic win lol. He gave kind of a wry smile when asked about his success vs the Pads this week and itâs something heâs obviously quite aware of. Seems like a really good dude and Iâm excited to get to know him more.
âŠand of course, thereâs no betting in baseball