Baseball to Consider Instant Replay…
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Sports Illustrated’s AP post reports that MLB is planning to discuss Instant Replay.
Baseball general managers want to look it over.
GMs plan to talk about the topic some more, and perhaps make recommendations in the future, even they know commissioner Bud Selig is against the having replays aid umpires’ decisions.
“There is sufficient interest in it that it really warrants further discussion,” baseball senior vice president Joe Garagiola Jr. said Wednesday at the GMs’ annual meetings. “There’s no specific action item at the moment. We just want to keep talking about the different ways it could come into play and just keep kind of refining our thinking on the topic.”
GMs have repeatedly discussed the topic but know replays aren’t likely to be used while Selig is in charge.
This time, they asked a committee that deals with umpires to develop recommendations for the full GMs group. Many GMs would favor replays on fair/foul calls and disputed home runs.
“The commissioner’s views on instant replay are well known but I also know he respects the body here,” Garagiola said.
The late September fiasco in Washington on 2nd baseman Chase Utley’s drive to rightfield that everyone; the umpires, the Phillies coaches and dugout apparently missed with the wildcard berth on the line, may have given momentum for consideration of instant replay. But in Utley’s case, the team was “asleep on job” in not making sufficient effort to follow the path of the ball and therefore, not raising a protest immediately after.
In other sports, instant replay is heavily regulated and limited in the number of times each team can employ it per game. But in order to use replay, a call has to be disputed immediately, not sometime later, in the other team’s half of the inning as Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Marcus Hayes reported occured regarding the game in question;
The umpires declined to comment, probably because the Phillies didn’t protest for a half-inning, not until video coordinator Kevin Camiscioli scooted down from the clubhouse with the bad news.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports writes;
Baseball, unlike its sporting brethren, has resisted succumbing to the giant tease of replay, which promises accuracy and accountability, then often delivers muddled calls, ensures slower games and suffers from fallible technology. And still, baseball’s general managers unanimously recommended Wednesday that the sport at least explore the possibility of using replay on controversial calls.
The suggestion came during the GMs’ meeting with Mike Port, MLB’s vice president of umpiring. Using a PowerPoint presentation, Port showed statistics to back up his contention that umpires improved this season in nearly every facet of their job. Had Port opted against PowerPoint, perhaps the GMs would not have been so cranky.
Because the numbers he included were rather compelling.
More than 50 percent of the games played this season were attended by someone from Port’s office, and in those games, they reported a total of 100 incorrect calls, or one every 12.2 games.
“Philosophically, it really goes to what you want the game to be,” Port said. “In our regard, many of us feel the game belongs in the hands of the people on the field, for better or worse.”
Port acknowledges “there are occasions, admittedly, where the umpire’s call can cost a team a game.”
Yet replay in baseball is a Pandora’s Box. If umpires look at replays to see if a ball hit a foul pole or landed above a yellow line to determine a home run, why shouldn’t they see if a ball hit down the line kicked up chalk and was fair? And if they double check whether an outfielder caught or trapped a ball when he dove for it in the outfield, what’s the harm in nitpicking whether a pitch nicked a player or he just did an Oscar-worthy acting job?
The point here seems to be that replay, if ever adopted in Baseball, must be controlled and regulated as to the circumstances of its use and restricted as to the number of times in a season, NOT in a game, that a team can employ it on a disputed call. Instant replay, if considered at all, MUST be considered with utmost caution so as to not damage the integrity of MLB as a sport.
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