Guardians' Bo Naylor is no longer 6-feet tall
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Guardians' Bo Naylor is no longer 6-feet tall originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
There's something particularly cool about getting to list yourself at 6-feet tall, rather than 5-foot-something.
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Bo Naylor is no longer part of that club with the Cleveland Guardians. His height has changed.
Naylor himself isn't actually any taller or shorter. His official listing with Major League Baseball has just been altered.
Last season, Naylor was listed at 6-feet even.
Now, he's listed at 5-foot-9.
Yep, a drastic change, and for good reason.
"We’re going to see a lot of height changes this year because, with the rollout of ABS, MLB is now measuring each player's height down to the millimeter," Joe Pompliano wrote on X. "The process is super strict — no shoes, no hats, knees exposed, back against the wall — and to account for potential shrinkage throughout the day, MLB is even requiring all its teams to take measurements between 10 am and 12 pm local time on their appointed day."
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Naylor, the Guardians starting catcher, will hopefully have a more accurate ABS strike zone for the challenge system. Every little bit counts when it comes to getting strike calls right and how they impact games.
The ABS system will set up the upper and lower portions of the zone based on percentages of a given player's height. So if a hitter has his height listed as too tall, then he'll have a bigger strike zone.
Naylor and a bunch of other players around the league don't want that, and so they've made sure to nail down their accurate height.
Even if it sounds less cool, the change could pay off in the batter's box.