Today marks the first day of the ‘instant replay’ era in MLB. The McAfee Coliseum in Oakland, Angel Stadium in Anaheim and Wrigley Field in Chicago will have their newly installed TV monitors and secure phone links to the MLB.com office primed and ready for operation, should the need arise. It looks like there is no turning back now.Â
After years of dogged resistance to using technology, the timing of the sudden decision to implement the new rule change has taken many people by surprise. A flurry of botched calls earlier in the season had many media outlets calling for the introduction of instant replay and this time their calls have been answered. MLB have worked hard to put the technical infrastructure in place and Bud Selig argued in the phone conference yesterday that there was now “no reason to wait”. He claimed that he is “comfortable with the technology” and that there was “no practical reason not to do it” as a result. Changing the rules with a month of the regular season to go doesn’t sound like a great idea though. Any teething problems will be jumped on by opponents of the move if they impact the pennant races down the stretch. While a win counts the same in April as it does in September, any confusion caused by the introduction of the new system at this stage of the season is bound to become a big story.
MLB’s press release has clarified that the instant replay system will be controlled by a media ‘war room’ in MLB.com’s offices. It will be the crew chief who determines whether a play needs to be looked at again and it will be the crew chief who does the looking. He will give the typical ‘T’ timeout signal before walking from the field and then sitting down to look at replays on a monitor, liasing with the technical staff back at HQ to give him all the available camera angles he requires.Â
What hasn’t been made clear (as far as I’m aware) is what the fans, both at the ballpark and watching on TV, will get to see during this process. In cricket and rugby, both types of spectator are able to see the footage that is being consulted by the video referee/umpire. This makes the system completely transparent as they know exactly what evidence the official has based his final decision on. The fundamental idea behind this new system is not just to get the decision right, but to be seen to get the decision right. That can only really happen if we get to watch the footage as it’s being consulted so hopefully MLB will take an open approach.
Selig has been adamant that this latest move does not signal any great softening in his stance against the general adoption of instant replay technology. Only ‘disputed’ home run calls will be reviewed and the Commissioner is determined that its use is not extended beyond this limited scope.Â
That still raises the question of what is a ‘disputed’ home run call? Essentially the umpires will make a call on the play and if they have sufficient doubt about it, they will take a second look. Managers will not be able to formally instigate the instant replay process by challenging a call, but clearly the umpires could be swayed into double-checking their decision if the manager kicks up a big enough fuss. This does raise the possibility of a certain amount of gamesmanship, with managers trying to coerce umpires to go to the instant replay if there is even just a small amount of doubt.
At the moment, disputed home run calls don’t crop up with any great regularity, but the experiences of other sports suggests that the introduction of instant replay may change this. In rugby, it seems like anything other than a try that is clearly absolutely legal now ends up being referred to the TV referee ‘just to make sure’.  You can hardly blame the officials for this. Getting a decision wrong is bad enough; getting a decision wrong after choosing not to go to the replay will be tantamount to career suicide if it costs a team an important victory.Â
For a lot of people, it is the extra time that will be taken to assess the play that makes them uneasy about the adoption of instant replay. While Selig has stressed that the system will be efficient to operate, it may still lead to excessive delays over the course of a season if umpires are placed in a situation where they refer more plays than would have previously been considered ‘disputed’ out of self-preservation. It’s certainly something that needs to be monitored.
MLB has been bullish about its pronouncement that instant replay is now a part of the game. The Umpires union and the Players Association have been more cautious, making it clear that they have only agreed for it to be used for the rest of this season at the moment and that it will be subject to review over the off-season. I’m sure baseball fans will be just as eager to see how the new rule plays out over the next couple of months before passing any definitive judgements on it.Â
3 comments
Some thoughts…
If the rule is used only for its stated purpose, I can’t see it causing substantial delays to any games, although that’s not to say that that makes it right.
As has been mentioned on another thread on this site, we will have to wait to see if the use is extended to other disputed calls. Presumably the logic behing using it for disputed home-run calls is that they are the event on a baseball field that happens furthest from any of the umpires. That seems sound enough, until you think that a “did-he-didn’t-he” catch on the warning track might occurs only a couple of inches from the home-run fence (in fact, Australia could argue they were deprived of the gold medal in the Athens Olympics because of an erroneous out call in the final on a “catch” that bounced off the middle of the fence into the fielder’s glove). So why are home-run calls special? And once you start that argument, where is the imaginary line in the outfield beyond which an umpire’s judgement is no longer deemed sufficiently accurate to not need an instant replay? And what’s there to stop that line moving ever closer to the infield?
The cynic in me would say that instant replay offers yet more scope for advertising in baseball, and given the controversy that the issue has caused, it would certainly be a prominent place to attach a brand’s name to.
Finally, whatever happens, like you I hope that the process will be an open one.
I happen to agree. If you’re going to use replay for homerun calls you might as well use it for other calls as well. Otherwise, don’t use it. A prime example was a play in today’s Redsox Yankees game at the Stadium. In the top of the sixth with two on and one out, A soft ground ball is hit to Arod who tries to tag Dustin Pedrioa who clearly runs on the infield grass which should have been the end of the inning as Arod then threw to first base and got the hitter. Instead the Sox had runners on both 2nd and 3rd with two men out and a two nothing lead. A base hit would have broken the game wide open and it would have been due to a blown call by the umpires. Fortunately Moose got the next man to strike out so the blown call didn’t have a chance to influence the outcome of the game. Under current rules that play can not be reviewed. But I don’t see any difference between that play and a homerun which could influence the out come of a game. That’s why the current rule should not have been implimented. It just doesn’t seem to work.
[…] we [the umpires] made the decision to use the technology and go look at the replays”. In a previous post on the issue, I raised the possibility that umpires could be tempted to go to the instant replay […]