Instant Replay

Instant Replay

            We’ve now had a full week of baseball now and more importantly we’ve had a full week of instant replay.  It’s been proven a flawed system and it has its holes but it’s nothing that can’t be improved with time.  But with all new systems we already have people complaining and wanting to go back to the old way.  Well it’s time to talk about it and look into the rules and potential expansions of the rule.

Lets start by taking a quick look at what exactly can be reviewed:

·      Ground-rule doubles

·      Fan interference calls

·      Boundary calls (managers may not, however, challenge home run or potential home run calls)

·      Force plays at all bases, except whether a middle infielder touched second base during the attempt to "turn" a double play

·      Tag plays on the base paths—whether a runner was tagged or whether the runner touched a base (an appeal is still required ahead of the latter)

·      Fair/foul calls on balls hit into the outfield

·      Time plays (whether or not a run scored prior to the third out)

·      Whether a runner passed a preceding runner

·      Scorekeeping issues, including the count, number of outs, score or substitutions

            A manager would have to go out and use a challenge whenever one of the above happens.  A team has someone watch a replay of the even and will give a sign to the manager as he is talking to the umps if they should challenge or not.  If the manager chooses to challenge then the umpires will watch a replay from a centralized replay center in New York and make a decision.  If the decision is overturned the manager is given 1 more challenge and it fails then the manager loses the ability to challenge a play.  Both managers have 1 challenge a piece and must be used before the 7^th inning, once past the 7^th its up to the umpires to choose what is review worthy.  This is where I see the major flaws; the managers need to be taken out of the process.  Why do we need to have the managers choose when to “challenge”?  Isn’t the goal of the replay to get the most correct calls we can get?  Why don’t we have a replay center at each stadium?  There are plenty of older umpires that would love to do that job.  We’ve already seen plays where a manager challenged a play, lost the challenge so he no longer challenges, and a play that needs to be reviewed can’t be challenged.  When the manager comes out to try and convince the umpires to do a review they just say, “well you shouldn’t have wasted your challenge.”

            It’s these questions that need to be answered and here are some ways I can see it being done.  Having a review center at the stadium will allow the umps to have a connection to a replay the entire game.  The reviewer can radio down to the umpires that they made the wrong call and the game can go from there.  This takes the managers out of the equation and doesn’t slow the game down, which is a major complaint.  This also means we don’t have issues where a manager can’t challenge what we all see as a blown call and the umpires don’t look foolish since they can quickly change it and all is good, also would reduce the arguments from managers since they would have gotten the info from the reviewer.

            So lets look at the list above and look at another issue, an issue that may already be solved next season, what’s not on the list that needs to be on it.  To me there’s at least 1 play that needs to be on here that isn’t and that’s traps, a play where a fielder “traps” a ball but looks like a catch.  It’s really a mystery to me why this wasn’t on the list in the first place since this is one of baseballs biggest controversies when they happen.  But we shall have to wait to see if anything changes since we have already gotten word that they plan to expand the reviewable plays list next year.

            I decided to write this blog due to a tweet I saw from Mark Melancon.

“.@MikeAndMike are going the wrong direction with baseball. The game needs less technology not more. #instantreplay”

To me this is flawed logic.  We as a society have improved our lives with more technology not less.  While I respect his opinion I also think that it’s completely wrong to think, “I want more wrong calls”, it really is just stupid to want the game to be judged by “human error” then your not a fan of the game you just want to see people get mad.  I understand that change is scary to people but also remember that a few years back people thought sabermetrics was a dumb idea too and it would never catch on, now must teams use advanced stats to help with majority of their scouting (in conjuncture with traditional scouting).  In the end if you really think that the game is better without instant replay and nothing good can come from it, I suggest you go ask Armando Galarraga and see how human error affected his career.