The Automated Ball-Strike system exists to fix umpire mistakes. On Thursday night at Citi Field, Marcus Semien used the Mets’ challenge to do the opposite. He challenged a strike. The pitch was right down the middle. The system held the call. Mets Twitter has not stopped roasting him since.
The moment came in the fifth inning of New York’s home game. Semien took strike two on a fastball from the Nationals starter that caught the center of the zone, looked at home plate umpire Edwin Moscoso like the call was outrageous, then tapped his helmet to trigger the ABS challenge.
The stadium video board showed the projected pitch location in real time. The pitch was a perfect bullseye. Not on the corner. Not nibbling. Dead center, top of the kneecap, middle width, the type of strike a youth league umpire could call from the parking lot. The crowd booed Semien before the graphic finished rendering.
That was the Mets’ only challenge for the inning under the new MLB rules. Semien used it. He wasted it. Two pitches later he struck out swinging.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza had no comment after the game beyond a tight smile and a polite ‘Marcus knows.’ Translation: that conversation is happening in the manager’s office, not in front of the cameras.
The ABS challenge system, fully rolled out across the majors this season, gives each team three challenges per game with successful challenges retained. The point is to take the worst three or four calls per night out of an umpire’s hands. The unintended consequence has been a stream of viral videos of players blowing challenges on obvious strikes because they thought the pitch was off the plate.
Semien is now the leader in that category for 2026. The previous benchmark was a Cody Bellinger challenge in April on a slider that was eight inches inside. Semien just topped it on a fastball with no horizontal movement at all.
The bigger story here is the Mets’ offense, which has stalled for two weeks. Semien was signed to a one-year prove-it deal in the offseason after a down year with Texas. He has been below league average at the plate so far and is hitting .218 with a .618 OPS. His glove at second is still elite. His bat has been a problem.
An ABS gaffe in the middle of a losing streak is the type of moment that becomes a stand-in for everything wrong with a player’s season. Fans do not boo your batting average, but they will boo a bad challenge in real time, and they did.
The Mets lost 6-2 to Washington. They have dropped six of their last eight and now sit five games back of Atlanta in the NL East. Mendoza was asked about his lineup construction afterward and gave the standard manager non-answer about trusting his veterans.
Semien is one of those veterans. The trust is still there. The challenge button needs a long break before he touches it again.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
