Braves analyst calls for ABS after umpire’s brutal strike call

Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why Atlanta Braves announcers are calling for drastic umpire changes.

The Braves dropped their seventh straight game Sunday afternoon, as a loss to the San Francisco Giants sent them 14 games back of the first-place New York Mets and 10 games under .500 for the first time since 2017. And home plate umpire Jansen Visconti did little to help dig the Braves out of their hole.

Trailing by one run with one on and one out in the ninth inning, Braves outfielder Alex Verdugo took a two-strike slider that was off the plate. Visconti, however, either saw it differently or didn’t see it at all, and opted to call it strike three.

“Oh, no!” Braves play-by-play voice Brandon Gaudin said immediately. “No, No! Of all the places to miss that call.”

The unjustified and untimely strike call by Visconti convinced Braves analyst C.J. Nitkowski to wave the white flag and say it’s time to welcome the automated ball-strike challenge system.

“Never at any point when the baseball comes out of his hand is it in the strike zone,” Nitkowski said. “That’s terrible. I mean, that’s not even close. And again, we know that ABS is probably on the way, we hate to have to have it, but we need it when things like that are happening.”

The disgust by Gaudin and Nitkowski was justified. It was a brutal strike call at the worst time in the game. Bad umpiring is not the reason the Braves are 10 games under .500 or 14 games behind the Mets at this point in the season, but it hasn’t helped.

With there always being such emphasis on speeding up the game, the thought of giving managers more challenges seems like an obverse action. But with strike calls like this one from Visconti, it’s hard to argue against ABS.

Last week, commissioner Rob Manfred said the league will propose to add the ABS challenge system for the 2026 MLB regular season. And for the Braves announcers, it sounds like they’re ready after watching Visconti Sunday afternoon.