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Report: MLB looking to expand instant replay

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During the pivotal game 2 of the Yanks’ and Twins’ 2009 American League Division Series, Joe Mauer lofted a ball down the left field line. It bounced fair in front of Melky Cabrera and bounded into the stands. The umpire though called it a foul ball, and the Yanks went onto win that game in 11 innings. If ever there were an appropriate time for instant replay, that play was it.

Today, we learn that baseball is considering expanding instant replay. Per the Associated Press, video review could be expanded in 2012 to “include trapped balls and fair-or-foul rulings down the lines.” MLB umps would not review safe or not calls, and strikes and balls would remain under the purview of the home plate umpire. Outside of a nostalgic appeal for history, there’s no reason not to do that. Getting these calls right takes minimal effort, and should take paramount importance in the scheme of a nine-inning game often decided by a matter of inches.

The paramount importance of getting it right

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Joe Girardi was not amused. Credit: AP Photo/LM Otero

When Francisco Cervelli’s throw to Derek Jeter arrived at the bag six feet ahead of Ian Kinsler, Jeter knew the Rangers’ second baseman had been caught stealing. He applied the tag on Kinsler’s shoulder and, without waiting for second base umpire Alfonso Marquez’s call, flipped the ball to Cano to start the around-the-horn. Cano caught the ball and stood there agape. Marquez had called Kinsler safe.

Somehow, in the ensuing moment of disbelief that followed, no one on the Yankees was thrown out of the game. Francisco Cervelli ran toward second base with an “Are you kidding me?” look on his face. Jeter says “Wait a minute” and starts conversing with the umpire. Joe Girardi, looking as mad as I’ve ever seen him, comes charging out on the field. But the outrage was to no avail. Marquez wouldn’t reverse his call, and baseball, mired in some traditionalist past where an easily correctible human error is allowed to rule the game, can’t figure out how to implement a sensible instant replay review. In the amount of time Girardi argued, the play could have been called correctly.

It’s not stretch to say that Marquez’s call changed the pace of the game. After Kinsler stole, Mitch Moreland walked, and Bengie Molina sacrificed the runners. Pedro Borbon hit a tapper to second that plated Kinsler, and then Javier Vazquez induced an Elvis Andrus flyout to end the inning. Andrus shouldn’t have been batting, and if the fallacy of the predetermined outcome were to hold true, the inning should have ended with the score knotted at zero.

Of course, the game ended up being a tense and endless one-run affair that ended in a walkoff in the bottom of the 13th. Of course, the Yanks failed to hit with runners in scoring position, going 3 for 17 and stranded 18 runners over the course of the game. Of course, Joba, oh so good lately, couldn’t escape The Eighth Inning with a lead. Of course, the Rangers used their expanded roster to send every person in Arlington to the mound. While the game turned on any one of these moves, the fact remains that Kinsler’s stolen base/caught stealing changed the game.

In 2010, Marquez simply as no excuse. He was standing above the play; he had a great view of the throw and the tag; and yet he missed it. Just as Jim Joyce blew the call in Detroit, so too did Marquez. It happens. But that doesn’t mean it should be allowed to stand. A simple review — one shot of the tag on instant replay — would have been enough to get the call right, and it’s moments such as these — isolated plays where the one event in question triggers a dead ball — are ripe for replay.

Major League Baseball continues to insist that any version of instant replay review would mess with the pace of the game. Fans don’t want to wait, they say, while the umpires huddle. Maybe that’s true for some people, but I’d rather see the umps get calls such as the one last night right. If it means waiting a minute or two, that’s a-OK with me. It’s far more enjoyable to see the game called properly than it is to see Ron Washington make five mid-inning pitching changes.

I went to bed annoyed at the Kinsler call last night, and I woke up still annoyed. The Yanks could have overcome it with just another hit or two with runners in scoring position, but they shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. And that is fully on Alfonso Marquez and Bud Selig’s obsession with some misguided notion of nostalgia.

Selig against expanding replay

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Before last night’s World Series game, before the bottom of the 7th ended with a controversial call and the top of the 8th ended with a flat-out wrong call, Bud Selig spoke to reporters about the state of baseball. Generally, he feels the game is strong, and fifteen years after a crippling labor strike, it is. He also addressed the increased use of technology in the game, and it is here that the Commissioner took a stance.

As Jim Caple reports:

MLB commissioner Bud Selig said he has been soliciting outside opinion from managers and general managers over the past few weeks and said no one offered a good explanation why the umpiring was so bad in the first rounds of the postseason.

He also declined to call for further use of replay. “The more baseball people I talk to, there is a lot of trepidation about it and I think their trepidation is fair,” Selig told reporters before Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday. “I’ve spent a lot of time [on this] over the past month and will spend a lot of time in the ensuing months as well. I don’t want to overreact. You can make light of that but when you start to think you’re going to have more intrusions — and even if their good intrusions — it’s something that you have to be very careful about. Affecting the game on the field is not something I really want to do.”

Selig has not been quick to embrace new technology over baseball tradition, in part due to worries about the pace of games. “Life is changing and I understand that,” he said. “I do like the human element and I think the human element for the last 130 years has worked pretty well. There have been controversies but there are controversies in every sport.”

Let’s take the 7th inning last night. With two on and one out, Johnny Damon hit a sinking line drive toward Ryan Howard. The Phillies’ first baseman either scooped the ball on a short hop or caught it above the ground on a fly. The first base umpire, standing behind the play, hesitated and that signaled that Damon was out on a line drive. Howard, though, had already thrown to second, seemingly as if to start a double play. Replays seemed to show that the ball kicked up some dirt into Howard’s glove, but even under a fine microscope, it was an inconclusive review.

Here, the call wasn’t the first base umpire’s to make. Blocked by Ryan Howard, he couldn’t see the ball hit the ground or Howard’s glove. At least the umps conferred about the play and upheld the call. On the calls Joe explored a few weeks ago, those ranging from obvious to atrocious, there are no answers. The umpires were in position to make the right calls and simply did not.

I’ve long called for increased instant replay, and last night’s game showed a need for it. I hear Selig’s concerns, but in Game 1 the umpires conferred about the Robinson Cano double play. A video review of Howard’s scoop would have taken the same amount of time. The human element, as Selig called it, has been a part of the game because video replay technological was not available for much of baseball history. Now that it is, Major League Baseball should embrace it to an extent reasonable. When everyone sees the correct call 10 or 15 times on broadcasts and highlights reels, the game is doing itself no favors if it eschews the opportunity to get it right the first time.

Thinking about instant replay

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I had a ticket to spot 7 of the standing room section behind Section 229. The view was fine, the crowd was electric and the game was, simply put, one of the best games — if not the best — I’ve seen live. I missed but one play, and apparently it was a controversial one.

Leading off the 11th inning, Joe Mauer lofty a Damaso Marte offering down the left field. From where I was standing, the ball kept slicing and slicing and then…it and Melky Cabrera disappeared from view. Phil Cuzzi called it a foul ball, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That no one came out to argue was telling. The ball, I assumed, was foul, and it was not until after the game, when my dad said, “Joe Mauer’s ball was fair,” that I had any idea the call was in doubt.

As we all know now, that ball hit fair territory by a good six inches, and Phil Cuzzi, the left field ump whose sole job it was to make that call, blew it. After the game, the umpires were verklempt. “We just feel horribly when that happens,” Crew Cheif Tim Tschida said to reporters after the game. “There’s a guy sitting over there in the umpire’s dressing room right now that feels horrible.”

The Twins bemoaned the call. Noting how a lead-off double could have changed the entire complexion of the 11th inning, Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire was incredulous. “We had six umpires out there, I think. I think, right, six? Six umpires,” he sputtered.

Since Cuzzi’s call and the subsequent shut-down relief work of David Robertson, nearly everyone baseball news outlet has called for expanded instant replay. We have, for example,Anthony Rieber and Brian Costa calling for just that, and Buster Olney thinks more instant replay would be a good fit for baseball. Even an NFL VP mocked baseball’s officiating.

The Yankees, meanwhile, think otherwise. As Marc Carig reported, Girardi is a-OK with the current state of replay in baseball. “I think it would break the rhythm of the game. Where would you stop?” he asked earlier today.

Girardi asks a good question: Where would you stop? With balls that go out of play, the answer is easy. Had instant replay review been used last night, Joe Mauer would have been awarded a ground rule double. But what if the ball had hit the side wall and stayed in play? If the foul call is overturned, where does Mauer end up — on second base or back in the batter’s box?

I’ve been a long-time proponent of instant replay review in baseball. If we have the technology to make the right call, we should use it. But although Buster Olney calls for the “immediate” expansion of instant replay, it isn’t that easy. The Commissioner’s Office will have to figure just how to deal with overturned calls. Unlike in football when the review is after the play, in baseball, plays unfold differently if a ball is fair. How baseball addresses that problem will determine whether or not the sport can effectively employ instant replay review. There is a very real chance it cannot.

Although this is tagged an open thread, I’d love to see a discussion about instant replay. Still, anything goes. Please use this game thread for Cardinals/Dodgers chatter. And play nice.

A review of MLB’s instant replay

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Click the image above. It gets very big, and I promise it’ll open in a new window. The play is a bit of a blur, but what do you see?

I see Mark Teixeira with his glove firmly around a strong throw from Alex Rodriguez and his foot planted on first base. I see Cristian Guzman still in the air above first base. I see unequivocal evidence that Guzman was out, and yet, a split second later, the umpire called him safe.

For a blown call, it was both monumental and underwhelming. It was monumental because Nick Johnson, the next hitter for the Nationals, blasted a two-run triple (not helped by a ill-conceived dive by Melky) that plated Cristian Guzman. It was underwhelming because, while the bleachers saw the replay and booed, it generated what looked more like a polite protest rather than a heated discussion from Joe Girardi.

Generally, when the umpires get it wrong, they don’t do so in such an obvious fashion. Bang-bang plays, slightly missed tags, balls that are just foul or kick up maybe a milimeter’s worth of foul line chalk — those are tough to see. This one, on a routine play at first, isn’t, and considering that umpires often listen — for the ball hitting the glove, for the foot hitting the bag — to make this call makes this worse.

Last year, Major League Baseball became the last major sport to institute instant replay review. It drove the purists nuts, but MLB had to embrace what has become a day-to-day technology in every broadcast of its events. When regional sports networks can replay bad home run calls to death, something has to give.

The way they implemented it, though, was entirely arbitrary. Only home run calls — fair, foul, over the fence or not, fan interference — would be subject to review. In a way, MLB modeled review after the NHL’s review of disputed goals, but the analogy lays bare the problem with it. Home runs may lead directly to runs, but baseball is a sum of its parts. A bad call at first base can be just as important as a home run. Why should one get special treatment while the other is subjected to bad calls?

Last night’s play at first base was unavoidable, and while critics of instant replay bemoan the time it takes to review plays, that is simply a red herring call. I got home, fired up the game archive on MLB.tv and zipped ahead to the 5th inning. Twenty seconds later, I had that screenshot and an unequivocal view of an obvious out that an umpire ruled safe. While Joe noted that the game probably unfolds differently if Guzman is out, we can’t dispute its impact on the Yanks’ loss, and I’d be happy to sit through a short 20-second review in exchange for the right call.

Right now, I don’t have a better solution. MLB can’t open instant replay to every ball and strike, to every close play. But when an umpire gets something so wrong and it changes the game, something has to give.

Instant reply to be implemented this week

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ESPN has the story. Here’s how it works:

For now, video will be used only on so-called “boundary calls,” such as determining whether fly balls went over the fence or whether potential home runs were fair or foul.

Video will be collected at the office of Major League Baseball Advanced Media in New York. If the crew chief at a game decides replay needs to be checked, umpires will leave the field, technicians at MLBAM will show umpires the video and the crew chief will make the call.

Personally, I am a fan of bringing instant replay into the game. While critics believe it will slow down the game and destroy the supposed integrity of the game — the same integrity that allowed for segregation, spitballers and steroids — anything that helps umpires get the calls right should be embraced. If the whole nation can see, via instant replay, that a ball left the yard but because the umpires, out of position, couldn’t make a call, why should the game suffer?

What I don’t understand, however, is the need to implement instant replay in a haphazard fashion with 30 games left in the season. Basically, the 2008 season will be played under two sets of rules. We’ll have non-instant replay games from the season’s first five months followed by one month of instant replay. That doesn’t seem like a very logical decision to me.

I think it would have made more sense to bring instant replay online via next spring’s World Baseball Classic and a widespread implementation on Opening Day. But it is what it is, and this move should be applauded.

The replay debate continues

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According to an ESPN report, Bud Selig and the baseball owners are prepping for instant replay prior to the end of this season. This move — years int he making — comes after a few high-profile blown calls earlier this season and an increasing belief that it’s far better for the umpires to be right than to keep up some semblance of “baseball tradition.”

But, as with any major baseball decision, this one is not without controversy. Dan Graziano sums up the problems:

I spoke with somebody from the players’ union, and with a few players, a couple of months ago about this. The union’s position is that baseball should wait on instant replay and make sure to do it correctly, rather than rush it. The players are concerned about the idea of a season played under two different sets of rules (i.e., why should a home run be overturned in September when it couldn’t be in May?), and they’re very concerned about the logistics.

There are legitimate questions about how replay would work and how it would be administrated. Would it all work out of some central office in New York, the way hockey runs its replay calls out of Toronto? How much would depend on camera work by team-owned TV networks, and how can those be certain to be impartial? How would they reconcile the differences in the number and locations of cameras from park to park and game to game, given the differences between games that are televised nationally on ESPN, Fox and TBS and the games that are only televised locally? And what of games that aren’t televised at all?

In short, there are a lot of reasons to wait on this until all of the questions are answered. I’m with the players on this. It would be better to test this system out next year in the World Baseball Classic and spring training — games that don’t actually count for anything — and work out some of the bugs in time for the start of the 2009 regular season.

I have long been on the record in favor of instant replay, but I have to agree with Graziano on this one. In an effort to implement something that doesn’t really need to be put in place until next season, Major League Baseball is going to jump the gun on this one and create more problems for this proposal than they will solve. But that’s the way the Commissioner’s Office has long operated.