The Instant Replay System is Good, But There Are Flaws

So far this year, there has been one thing that has already made an impact in its first year of play: the replay system. So far, it’s made a bigger impact than you might think.

The umpires can review a couple of things. First, they have been able to review home run calls since 2008 to determine:

·         Fair or foul

·         Whether the ball actually left the ballpark

·         Whether the ball was subject to spectator interference

As part of the new collective bargaining agreement with the owners and players union of the MLB and the umpires union, instant replay can be used to include fair and foul calls and balls that are caught vs. balls that are trapped. They can also review whether a runner is safe or out at a base, a common challenge that managers use.

Managers are granted one challenge over the first six innings of the game and two from the seventh inning until the end of the game. Some calls cannot be challenged, but still reviewed by the umpires. Calls that are challenged will be reviewed by a crew in MLB headquarters in New York City, who make the final ruling. It’s just like a ruling in football, where a coach can review a play and throw a red flag. Only there’s no flag- the manager just goes out.

 

 So far, it’s been… interesting. We saw the first challenge with the Cubs and Pirates for a call at first base. The Cubs challenged the ruling but lost. There have been calls overturned that turned the game a different direction, as well as losing calls that made managers unable to challenge a key call later on.

 Has it killed a manager’s argument? What would Bobby Cox do if he had the challenge system? There has been a significant decline in ejections so far this year, probably because they have the ability to challenge calls. In fact, there has only been one ejection that I know of, and it happened at Wrigley last night. Manager Rick Renteria was ejected after calling balls and strikes (which is non-review-able).

Also the managers can wait for a sign from the dugout to see if they actually want to challenge the call after reviewing it. So a manager will walk real slow, talk to the umpire for a bit, then make the decision to challenge the call or not. Then it’ll take about 2 minutes to review a call, and then the umpires make a decision.

It also really hurts an umpire’s power. Say what you want to say, but these umpires still ump really well. But the main issue is how they review and the time it takes.

In last Wednesday’s game between the Oakland A’s at the Cleveland Indians. With A’s catcher Derek Norris on third base, Josh Donaldson hit a chopper down the third-base line. A play at the plate tags Norris out, much to the irritation of manager Bob Melvin, so he challenges the call.

And thus, a snooze fest followed. The one, single instant replay crew in New York was already reviewing a different call, so this one took five minutes before they even reviewed it! How did nobody recognize that there could be multiple reviews at the same time with up to 15 games being played? The call was upheld, and Jed Lowrie would come in with an RBI single right after. So it didn’t even matter.

Another flaw came with the Nationals and Braves game. Ian Desmond hit a line drive that got stuck into the padding in the left field wall. Justin Upton immediately threw his arms up when he saw the ball under the padding, but the umpires signaled running. Andrelton Simmons screams at Upton to throw the ball as Desmond circled the bases for a game-tying inside-the-park home run.

After manager Fredi Gonzalez challenged the call, the umpires agreed, and Desmond walked from the dugout back to second. The problem is, even with the replay, the umpires got the call wrong. Upton picked up the ball from the wall with zero effort. Now I guess the word “lodged” has a new definition. Upton just screwed up and even replay could not realize that.

The replay thing isn’t supposed to make baseball perfect, but as of now it adds more time to an already time-consuming game. The replay is nice, but it still has its flaws. They need to add at least one other booth, make calls faster, and the managers need to make a faster call in declaring whether they want to challenge that or not. Time will tell if they will fix this, but for now, it is what it is.