By Scott B:
One of the biggest aspects of being a sports fan is the debate that comes along with it. Debate (and arguing on the Internet) about players, teams, or the games themselves, takes up far more time amongst fans than the actual games do. One major thread of debate amongst fans is officiating, especially right now in Major League Baseball. The season is in full swing, and along with it, expanded instant replay. The first month of the season has given us a good preview of what and what not to expect from the new system.
I’ll admit it right away: I love instant replay in sports. Calls being made correctly is important to me, even if it means a call going against a team that I’m rooting for. This is even more true when it comes to baseball, a sport in which a large amount of plays are finished at a very fast pace, and often times, very closely. This therefore makes baseball the perfect sport to have a strong and effective replay system in place to help the officials.
While I understand that others are wary of, or even downright against instant replay, I feel that it’s an important and correct step to help the game grow and improve. The so-called “human element” that has been with the game since its inception, fosters the idea that umpires getting calls wrong isn’t a big deal. The rulebook clearly lays out what is or isn’t an out, a home run, a fair ball, or a foul ball, leaving out any room for interpretation or bias from an umpire. If so many demand that the players respect the “unwritten rules” of the game, then we need to also respect the actual rules of the game by letting the game happen the way it’s supposed to, and instant replay helps the umpires ensure sure that that happens.
To establish the need for instant replay in the attempt to get plays called correctly, it’s important to look how often that’s currently happening. Baseballsavant.com has been keeping track of all the challenged calls so far this season, and the numbers show that a shade over 40% of all reviewed calls have been overturned.
This means that umpires are only getting those calls right at a 60% clip. A large majority of the plays that have been reviewed so far are either force plays or tags plays, both of which happen very quickly and can leave the umpire in the uncomfortable position of having to go with his best judgment, or even worse, flat out guess.
This of course is a very small sample so far and is likely to fluctuate, but part of the problem is that we don’t have any previous seasons to compare it to; we don’t know at what percentage umpires have gotten calls right in the past. But if the numbers turn out to consistently show that close plays are only getting called correctly 60% of the time, it proves the clear need for a way to increase the number of correct calls. As long as humans are the ones making calls, there will inevitably be mistakes. It was way overdue to implement a system to help fix that.
Another common argument against instant replay is that it adds a substantial amount of extra time to the games in which it’s utilized, but when we look at the numbers that we have so far, that argument fails to pan out.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports wrote last week that the average time on replays so far, from the time the manager challenges the call until the umpire either confirms or overturns it has been one minute and fifty-eight seconds. Given that the current rules on instant replay give each manager two challenges at most, along with the umpires having full review authority over home runs and any play from the 7th inning and beyond, how many replays could we realistically see happening in one game? Four? Five?
As of April 23rd, there had been 140 total challenges so far this season through 320 games. That’s far less than one challenge per game on average, but even if a single game reached a higher number of challenges, we’re only talking about an extra 10-15 minutes. If a person is genuinely concerned that games are taking too long, they should be urging MLB to address topics that would have a tangible effect on game times, such as enforcing the largely ignored time limit between pitches.
Of course, all of this isn’t to say that there aren’t improvements that can be made. As with any new rule change or system that’s being implemented, there should be tweaks and improvements. The first major change that needs to happen is to eliminate manager challenges and leave all replays fully up to the umpiring crew. The sole purpose of instant replay is to eliminate incorrect calls, yet leaving the questioning of those calls in the hands of the manager, especially at such a limited number, flies completely in the face of that.
Not letting umpires have complete authority over the replay system until the final three innings of the game sends the message that getting a call correct in the early innings is somehow less important than that of later in the game. Umpires shouldn’t have to have their hands tied when it comes to getting a call correct. Allowing the umpires to utilize instant replay to confirm a call at any and all points during the game will let instant replay serve its true purpose. And for those who worry that replay is adding too much extra time to games, doing away with manager challenges would eliminate the extra time that’s being taken up by managers while they wait for word on if they should challenge a call.
Another change that needs to be made is to make sure each stadium is equipped with enough cameras to show every play from as many angles as possible. In addition to being able to overturn or confirm a call on the field, umpires are also allowed to declare that a play has “stood” when they aren’t able to clearly rule one way or the other, which adds unneeded uncertainty to the capability of the replay system.
Providing the replay umpire at the New York headquarters with as many views as he needs would largely eliminate uncertainty about calls and therefore increase the likelihood that plays are being called correctly (which, once again, is the entire purpose of instant replay). And while no system will ever be perfect, this would also work to ease the worries of anyone who feels that instant replay should be done away with simply because some calls were still incorrect after they were reviewed.
Romanticizing baseball, especially baseball from the past, is a very easy thing to do. It’s a trap we all fall into. But it’s important that the game adapts to the world in which we have it. The new system has flaws for sure, but as we’re seeing with the changes MLB has already made to the new (and universally hated) enforcement of the transfer rules, they’re willing to change and improve as issues arise. Remember, the reason that the “human element” was a part of the game in the first place is because there was no other option available. The baseball world of the past didn’t always have the tools to fix these problems, but the current baseball world does. Willfully choosing not to utilize all of the technology we have at our disposal purposefully casts an eye back at what the game used to be instead of looking ahead to what it can become.