Orioles spark chaos after ABS call leaves Twins manager furious

In an opening weekend marked by the new ABS challenge system, the final inning of the series finale between the Baltimore Orioles and the Twins delivered both the most impactful challenge of the weekend and the most entertaining reaction. Everything about the drama that unfurled around ABS in this game was a big win for the challenge system.

The biggest reason this was a win is that it provided the clearest example anyone's seen this season of the system doing what it was designed to do: prevent games from being decided by umpires' mistakes.

Late game ABS drama between the Orioles and demonstrated the benefits of the new challenge system

With one out and a runner on first in the bottom of the ninth of a two-run game, Twins' first baseman worked the count full against Orioles closer Ryan Helsley. Helsley needed to throw a strike; a ball would send the game-tying run to first and bring the potential game-winning run to the plate. The Orioles might have had the lead, but it felt as though the game hung in the balance in this moment.

In this high-pressure situation, Helsley came through and delivered a perfect slider that caught the edge of the strike zone, and the umpire called it a ball and awarded Bell first base. In the pre-ABS world, Helsley would have had to just live with the fact that he did everything right and the umpire got the call wrong. There's no way of knowing what would have happened, but there's a very real chance that if Bell had walked, the Orioles would have eventually lost this game, in large part because of a missed call.

That's not what happened, though, because of ABS Helsley was able to challenge the call and be rewarded for his perfect pitch. Bell was out, and the Orioles were one out away from sealing a series victory.

It was a perfect example of the benefit of ABS. The umpire made a wrong call that could have swung the game, and the challenge system reversed the call, making it so the game was decided by the players rather than the umpire.

That brings us to the second reason this was a win for ABS. Twins manager Derek Shelton was not thrilled that a potential injustice had been corrected, and he gave the umpires an earful. Shelton wasn't upset that the call didn't stand; rather, he felt the Orioles had taken too long to tap their heads and shouldn't have been allowed to challenge.

Upon video review, Helsley can be seen tapping his hat almost immediately when the pitch is called a ball, so Shelton was wrong to be this upset, but he likely didn't see Helsley challenge as pitcher challenges are rare, and Helsley's first head tapping motion was pretty reserved.

What was a win for ABS, though, was that the fans still got to watch a classic manager vs umpire screaming match. One of the points against ABS is that some people enjoy the human element of the umpire's strike zone and the drama that bad calls sometimes create.

Managers and umpires going nose to nose, screaming at each other, has been a part of the game for a long time. Some fans really like them, just head over to YouTube and check out Jomboy Media's most-viewed videos. The primary instigator of these blow-ups is missed balls and strike calls, so the idea that these calls would be fixed without a screaming match made some people concerned that they'd be missing an entertaining part of the game.

Shelton getting ejected in the first series of the season proves that ABS will not eliminate manager vs umpire drama, but rather gives the manager more umpire-related decisions to make. Shelton is not going to be the last manager to be ejected for arguing with an umpire for allowing a challenge that they feel is too late. Especially as time goes on and teams experiment with ways to help the batters know when to challenge.

All in all, ABS showed how it can provide the best of both worlds. The bad calls, which fans hate, were overturned, but the drama, which fans love, remained.