{"id":654,"date":"2008-09-20T12:36:40","date_gmt":"2008-09-20T11:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=654"},"modified":"2009-09-26T12:12:20","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T11:12:20","slug":"instant-replay-case-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"Instant Replay: Case Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third use of instant replay in MLB occurred in last night’s game between the Twins and the Rays<\/a> and it produced the first occasion in which the call on the field was reversed after review.\u00c2\u00a0 Carlos Pena had to wait at second base for five minutes, but finally he was able to complete his tour of the bases as his double became a home run.\u00c2\u00a0 On the negative side, it did take a relatively long time to arrive at the final decision.\u00c2\u00a0 On the positive side, it resulted in the correct decision being made.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does the positive outweigh the negative?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s down to personal opinion.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The umpires are there to make decisions and they had to make a difficult one here.\u00c2\u00a0 They opted to call it fan interference, but the MLB.com report notes that a pool reporter questioned the umpires’ motives for doing so:<\/p>\n

Davis was asked by a pool reporter if making the fan interference call was the safe call, knowing that they could go to instant replay. <\/em><\/p>\n

“That’s not how we umpire,” Davis said. “We umpire to call them as we see them, and then the replay is obviously a tool we have at our disposal.” <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s easy to suspect that the pool reporter might have been on to something with his line of questioning and, if so, then that’s a strong argument against the replay system.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t want to be in a situation where the umpires are making different decisions now that they know there is a safety net.\u00c2\u00a0 The five minute delay felt like a long time for the players to be stood about doing nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 If that’s how long it takes to get the decision right, then it should only be used as a last resort and not as a safe way for the umpires to deal with any vaguely contentious home run call.<\/p>\n

But if Davis says that this wasn’t the case then we have to take his word for it.\u00c2\u00a0 When you watch the play, you can appreciate that it was a difficult one for the umpires to call.\u00c2\u00a0 With the ball landing just over the outfield wall in right-centre, none of the officials were particularly close to it (nor could they have been); therefore none could have had an excellent view of whether the fan interfered before the ball left the yard or not.\u00c2\u00a0 They thought he had and so that was their decision.<\/p>\n

The incident can probably be used by proponents on both sides of the argument to support their view.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it took too long and the umpires played it safe in the first instance?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it shows that umpires can get these difficult calls wrong when they only have one chance to look at it in real speed and that they should use the technology to make sure the decision is right?<\/p>\n

In this case, ultimately you need to see it from Tampa Bay’s point of view.\u00c2\u00a0 Without the replay, they probably would have been denied a home run.\u00c2\u00a0 At this crucial time of the season, everyone should be glad that the correct decision was made, however it was reached.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third use of instant replay in MLB occurred in last night’s game between the Twins and the Rays and it produced the first occasion in which the call on the field was reversed after review.\u00c2\u00a0 Carlos Pena had to wait at second base for five minutes, but finally he was able to complete his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4726,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/4726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}