so what do we think about ***INSTANT REPLAY***???

mods: can we ban joe sheehan and will carroll?

I think JS is talkin' bout an evolution

They're a LOT more competent, as a group, than officials in virtually every other major sport.

nah it's just an easier game to officiate than every other major sport.

bcz hoops refs don't call anything.

except for their bookies amirite

ha hhahaa

Last night, Tommy Hutton (Marlins broadcast) said instant replay will make games "five, six hours long."

Uh-huh.

no recollection of starting this thread.

it's a good idea, baseball is too fast-paced and razzle-dazzle oriented these days~

― cankles, Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:25 AM (1 year ago)

Posnanski:

You just can't have these missed calls and maintain your authenticity. You just can't. Not over time. And replay seems the most viable answer.* So if baseball has to give up some time and a bit of tradition to get the calls right, then I think sooner or later -- sooner -- they will have to do that.

*It may not be the only answer, though. I was talking to a baseball insider who says that baseball could fix a lot of these problems by rethinking how umpires do their job. He thinks umpires could work together better as a team (could the third base umpire have helped out on that Buster Posey stolen base), he thinks they could be positioned better, he thinks they could be trained better. I'm skeptical ... but I'm also for any answer that will get us the right calls much more often.

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2010/10/bad-calls-in-baseball.html

I'm also for any answer that will get us the right calls much more often.

+1

Kahrl:

"Triple-round playoffs have all sorts of symptoms, but mostly they're a matter of scale. With so many more playoff games played in the wild-card era, every season and season after season, hardly a game goes by when one Yankee or another isn't setting some sort of record for most post-season hits or runs or full counts. It's all well and good, an act of vengeance on the record books where the present gets to blot out the feats of Octobers past, against leagues with their own historical handicaps.

But one of the other unavoidable symptoms of the simple fact of there being more post-season baseball every October is that you end up raising the odds of more Denkinger moments. Worse yet, there ends up being that much more at stake when Eric Gregg puts too much sugar on his corn flakes. The imperfect necessity of umpiring has long depended on the same basic assumption that Churchill asserted that democracy rests upon—it may well be the worst form of officiating ballgames, but for the alternatives.

That was an easy enough assertion during Churchill's lifetime. Unfortunately for the men in black in the present, mistakes don't just get made, they get catalogued and dissected. Calls for replay, however haphazardly they get dismissed by Bud Selig as a minor dissatisfaction, get better and better support for their arguments every October, because that's when the magnification on the inevitable human errors gets ratcheted up from the irked and perhaps indulgent to the understandably outraged. Perhaps worse still—for umpires, obviously, but perhaps for the game as well—the same comfortable, ready faith in technological perfectability that delivers a dubious certitude about Gamecast and PITCHf/x data informs arguments that the time for technological solutions is now."

Player-ump relationships to be on table

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5662238

i would love to see balls and strikes called by pitchF/X and contested close plays be reviewed by a 'video booth umpire', i don't think it would slow the games down significantly at all. i suspect it won't happen anytime soon though unless some other semi-high-profile league like NPB starts doing it and people have a successful example to point to.

is the fangraphs crowdsourcing tool not able to livepoll mlb extra innings subscribers? i've voted in a few NY1 pat kiernan polls via my remote control.

what happened to tennis when it went from line judge to lasers? was it a big deal?

reactions were mixed at first - the technology is only accurate to like, 3 millimeters, and a couple of guys (safin, federer) made a big deal out of that. it's been overwhelmingly successful though. it's an incredibly significant improvement especially when the line in question is opposite the chair umpire and s/he doesn't feel comfortable overruling the call. and it's not like the lines are called by robots only; players appeal a call with which they disagree. really the biggest controversies are (1) abusing the system to buy yourself extra time and (2) looking to your coach's box to ask if you should challenge a call. women are bigger offenders on both fronts

it takes like ten seconds too - added match time is negligible

yeah, why not test it out in spring training or interleague? or in japan?

(thanks kk btw)

not that Apple needs to spend any more on marketing this shit, but a pretty effective sneak promotion would be umpires whipping out iPads unannounced to quickly do an on the fly HR review this postseason instead of having to leave the field.

In looking at the replay, Buck Martinez says, “Kinsler might have been out.” Then, again, the broadcast continues without additional replays or discussion about a key scoring play.

The Common Man is left to wonder why TBS would ignore such an obvious storyline in its broadcast of Game 5. And The Common Man is also left to wonder what other camera angles were available to catch the action. These were two prominent scoring plays that would have loomed over the final result until the 9th inning, when Kinsler hit his two run homer. Indeed, going into the 9th inning, the score would have been 2-2, though it’s hard to imagine Joe Maddon managing any differently at that point. To have such a brief mention of the possibility that the calls were wrong, and no additional replay is incredibly strange.

To The Common Man, it suggests that perhaps TBS was asked not to make a big deal out of potentially missed calls. This would seem to jive with an earlier play in the San Francisco-Atlanta series, where Buster Posey was clearly out at 2B, but announcers refused to acknowledge it, in spite of the video evidence to the contrary (and Posey saying after the game "it's a good thing we don't have instant replay). If this is the case, it seems likely that the commissioner’s office has made conscious decision not just to ignore the loud cries for expanded instant replay, but to tacitly suppress them by denying these voices additional evidence with which to make their case....

http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2010/10/reluctant-conspiracy-theory.html

ya. not surprising.

@joe_sheehan
Is there anything more useless than outfield umpires? An appendix? Snooki?

Outfield umps in the playoffs are like triangle players who miss their one cue in the last minute of the symphony.

Baseball had hoped to increase video reviews this season to include trapped balls, fair-or-foul calls down the lines and fan interference all around the ballpark.

The additional replay required the approval of MLB and the unions representing the umpires and the players. MLB executive Rob Manfred told The Associated Press on Tuesday that all three sides weren't able to come up with an agreement.

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/3/13/2868865/expanded-instant-replay-baseball-2012-cba

They're looking into having a central replay War Room next year.

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/5/29/3051214/replay-review-mlb-central-location-2013

Works for me.

Things are coming along according to Sheehan's post upthread from four years ago.

I used to be more pessimistic about replay but I've come around a bit, I'm really for any form of replay (used in moderation) that doesn't delay the game too much.

I want the MLB Ump Cave next door to the Fan Cave.

re "in moderation" -- I don't want a system where managers can challenge 20 ball/strike calls per game.

xpost

i can't imagine it would cover balls and strikes

no, that's for the improved K Zone in 10-15 years.

BRING ON THE ROBOTS

@SBerthiaumeESPN
#Yankees Dewayne Wise dove into LF stands. Ball clanked off his glove & was picked up by fan 3 seats away. Called a catch by Mike Dimuro.

instant replay would only hamper the yankees; can't have it

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9570618/mlb-expands-instant-replay-2014-include-manager-video-challenges

...pending owner approval at the winter meetings.

Neyer has some thoughts

Here's what UNLIMITED VIDEO REVIEW might well mean: After every close play, everybody in the ballpark -- the umpires on the field, the players, the fans, the broadcasters -- would stop whatever they're doing, and look up toward the press box, where presumably this extra umpire will be stationed. Upon him and him alone, the fate of the world rests. That's a lot of pressure, plus you're asking an umpire to second-guess his colleagues many times per game. Which won't be any fun at all.

So it wouldn't be any fun, and it would slow the game down, and it would shift everyone's attention away from the field (where it should be) to the press box (where it shouldn't be).

Now, one could add a wrinkle. The umpire in the booth might not be the final arbiter. Instead, he might quickly flag questionable plays, so quickly that perhaps nobody would bother waiting for him. If it's not immediately questionable, play continues apace. If it's truly questionable -- I'm guessing this would happen three or four times per game -- the guy in the booth could halt play, and hand things off to the boys in New York with all their high-def monitors and super-slo-mo gizmos and whatnot.

But none of this is really easy, or simple. If it was, they would have done it already.

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/8/15/4624936/mlb-instant-replay-system-review-manager-challenges

rip managerial ejections

this is huge

In my opinion, it worked in ice hockey, fwiw.

under very limited circumstances, tho -- nashville couldn't protest matt duchene being a mile offside for instance

arizona fall league is testing instant replay challenges this week

tonight's game featured seven reviews and three reversals

To marry this change with enforcing the pitch time limit wd be cool.

Would managers challenge all walk-off plays?

people thought that would happen in tennis but it by and large hasn't, it's kind of an etiquette thing i guess

To marry this change with enforcing the pitch time limit wd be cool.

yeah, they're going to need to avoid adding 15 minutes onto game lengths. although i guess maybe televised games could do some of their precious commercials while the plays are under review.

no the public demands 8 angles in that time, even if the result is obvious.

commercials during reviews would just be additional -- it's not like they'd reduce between-innings ads

perfect!

well i shouldn't complain. more commercials are good for the game because it feeds into the trillions of tv $ that each team gets, which in turn enables every GM to occasionally go on a bender and wake up having signed a 8 year $200 million+ contract with 31 year old home run hitter

Red Sox challenge call that Whit Merrifield is safe at 2B in the 1st; call overturned, runner is out. Powered by @Mitel. pic.twitter.com/MRCn2rvu0z

— MLB Replays (@MLBReplays) August 7, 2019

starting to think calstars is Billy Martin

i agree that that's dumb, but it seems like the problem isn't instant replay but the idea that you have to maintain constant contact with the base to be safe

yeah idk if instant replay is really good for the game or not but giving managers the ability to challenge any safe call where it looked like his hand might've briefly slid off for 1/100th of a second is definitely bad

if the replay crew can't tell if you were off the bag while watching at full speed, then you should be safe. none of this frame-by-frame crap. why would you emulate the one thing everyone hates about the NFL

or just change the rule so that a split-second loss of contact doesn't keep you from being safe

this wd be easily remedied by saying there's a "safe zone" above the bag if your foot comes off for a split second, or somesuch

guys i don't know much about baseball but I'm pretty sure one of the rules is that one is "safe" when touching the bag

* at 2nd or 3rd base
* except for a period after the play has determined to have ended but the next play has yet to start
etc etc

there are already exceptions to that rule

i don't want a safe zone, and if you are tagged while off the bag you should be out -- if the ump sees it. make whatever happens after the runner's initial contact with the bag unreviewable

this shit is getting out of hand and really soils the spirit of the game

except for a period after the play has determined to have ended but the next play has yet to start

you mean when time out is called?

etc etc

what is the etc? it's not complicated. stay on the bag!

Yeah I hate replay with the fire of a thousand suns but if the guy's tagged while off the bag he should be out, replay or not

i have to say i think replay works pretty goddamn well in baseball, particularly relative to other sports. Hawkeye in tennis is the only system that's better but that's just because the judgment calls are so much simpler.

Hawkeye is great because it's so fast - what does it take, like 10-15 seconds? If MLB replay was fast I'd love it. But it's unbearably slow.

(better than NBA replay though, that's for sure)

what is the etc? it's not complicated. stay on the bag!

the times when the runner's forward motion causes their hand to slide off the bag for 1/20th of a second. in general I hate the idea of using replay to overturn plays that never would've been called that way in real time.

hawkeye is almost instantaneous iirc

anyway i would like to point out that i was otm four hours ago

btw fuck the spirit of the game, that sounds like George Will

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31240968/braves-rip-embarrassing-call-home-plate-keyed-phillies-win

definitely looks like they fucked this one up

MLB replay system would be a hell of a lot more accurate if the crew in New York didn’t know what the call on the field was.

— Lane Adams (@LA_Swiftness) April 12, 2021