Angels catcher has a great chance to revitalize career with MLB's new ABS rule change

Baseball is an ever-evolving sport, and there was just a massive rule change that will massively effect pitchers and catchers. Essentially, there will be a seconds-long process of players challenging calls when they believe the home plate umpire missed a call. Each team will have two challenges a game, and if they get a call reversed then they get the challenge back.

Per Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com: "On Tuesday, the Joint Competition Committee approved the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, powered by T-Mobile, to be used at the MLB level beginning in 2026. It’s another technological step forward for a league that has long hadreplay review in place but has never had a way for teams to appeal the judgment of a home-plate umpire on ball-strike calls."

The old-heads are already lamenting the skill of catch framing going out the window, but Angels fans should not care less about that given who their catcher is.

Angels catcher has a great chance to revitalize career with MLB's new ABS rule change

Logan O'Hoppe is one of the worst catchers in baseball at stealing strikes -- he is in the 9th percentile of MLB catchers this season with regards to framing pitches. He has talked all season about tweaking his mechanics, as he has changed his catching stance a few times in order to better position himself for incoming pitches. O'Hoppe seems like he's been in his own head this season with tweaking his game, as he is having a largely disappointing season relative to self-imposed and fans' expectations.

Both O'Hoppe and Angels fans expect him to be a franchise cornerstone, but he still has so much to work on in order to achieve his lofty goals. De-emphasizing pitch framing very well could unlock him in a major way, as the 25-year-old clearly is pressing hard to better himself. Pressing like he has can be incredibly detrimental for a player, and hopefully now he can ease up and focus much more on his bat-to-ball skills, swing decisions, throws from behind the plate, etc.

O'Hoppe's value can only go up with this latest rule change. He can spend far more time working on his revered offensive game rather than receiving pitches, and maybe he will finally reach his potential next season. The Angels are one of the worst teams of all-time with regards to striking out, and O'Hoppe is perhaps the greatest contributor to that ugly stat. He can now focus much more on minimalizing his offensive weaknesses, and the Angels and he might be much better off because of that.

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