Baseball: Less inertial than you might expect
It seems as though baseball is finally taking a big step forward into 1990 and adopting instant replay. I personally like the idea of instant replay being used for home runs — since that’s a play that has a significant effect on the game — but I think allowing replay to be used to challenge strike calls would be an absurd lengthening of the game. I agree with Terry Crowley (even though he’s lucky he’s in fuckin’ baseball) that the umpires are generally reliable and do a good job, but, man, those muffed home run calls can swing whole games and sure do make bad press.
Why not institute a challenge system, like the one used in football? Football coaches get two challenges per game that they can use to have a call reviewed. If, after review, the call stands, the coach is charged a timeout. It adds an extra strategic element to the game, and makes it so you only challenge when it really matters and you think you’ll win.
Comment by Stephen | 16 June 2008
Well, first of all, there aren’t any “timeouts” in baseball like there are in football because there’s no clock. You can call time at any point that the action is stopped and the umpire will usually grant it, although this is at his discretion. It’s also at his discretion when the timeout is over–you see it very often when the manager visits the mound to stall for time to let a reliever warm up. The manager, pitcher, and catcher will stand around shooting the shit until the umpire comes trotting out to break up the party.
My personal opinion is that we could avoid the whole “replay challenge on balls and strikes” issue entirely if we just eliminated the middle man and had the machine call balls and strikes directly. There is already a system in place in many major league ballparks to do this–it’s called QuesTec. The umpires hate it, because, hey, fucking accountability! Some pitchers hate it too because umpires they’re used to getting outside strike calls on no longer give up those same calls because they know the machine is watching and will be all “THAT WAS SO NOT A STRIKE BITCH!”
I figure once you eliminate the need to do replay review of strike calls, you can easily implement replay review for on-the-field calls without unduly slowing down the game.
Comment by Dave | 17 June 2008