Practical Replay
After last night’s game in Detroit (and in Seattle, but that didn’t get as much press), I’d imagine the overwhelming majority of fans are now in favor of some sort of instant replay in Major League Baseball. The current four umpire setup isn’t sufficient to get the calls right often enough. MLB even admits this in the post-season, adding two additional umpires to help try to ensure greater accuracy.
So, the real question is how to practically implement it. I’m not a big fan of the NFL’s system, where the onus is on the coaching staff to challenge a call and then the official has to leave the field in order to look at a monitor. I don’t want Tony LaRussa throwing flags on the field, and then Jim Joyce wandering into a tunnel somewhere for a few minutes. There has to be a better way.
The best suggestion seems to be to just add a fifth umpire to each crew and station him in front of a bank of television monitors. He could communicate with the rest of the crew by earpiece, and would have the power to overturn the call on the field. For situations like last night’s game in Detroit, the fix would be remarkably easy and take less than 30 seconds. Joyce calls Donald safe, the replay ump simply informs him that he was conclusively out, and the crew chief changes the call.
It gets a bit stickier in other situations, however, and this is where it would take some good planning to figure out what to do. There are quite a few plays where the reaction of the players on the field about what to do is based on a call on the field by the umpire. If a ball is ruled foul, the runners stop and return to their base. So, it’s not as simple as simply ruling the ball fair, because then you would have to figure out where the runners would have gotten had the call initially been right. I’m not sure there’s a good fix for this, so I’d probably lean towards having the replay umpire not be involved with fair/foul calls.
The replay umpire would be most useful on safe/out calls and on home run reviews, so I’d start there. Just give them authority to make the call in those situations. We’ll figure out fair/foul and balls/strikes at a later date. For now, though, a fifth umpire taking advantage of the technology we have seems like a no-brainer.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Do all MLB stadia have the same camera positions? Consistent replay accuracy would also require consistent equipment (and preferably consistent stadia). MLB would have to invest toward infrastructure to create equality.
I don’t think they would need to make a change. In an ideal situation, yes you would have cameras running through the game in key locations. However, I wouldn’t want that to hold up implementation. My position is pretty simple – replay won’t get 100% of the calls right (see the NFL). However, ANY improvement in accuracy is better than what we have today.
For stadiums that don’t have proper camera coverage the replays will be less effective. And by less effective, they may not overturn as many initial wrong calls as we would like.
Fair / Foul in the outfield seems pretty straight forward to me, ground rule double. I’m sure someone with Hit F/X data could determine the avg slugging percentage on balls hit between 45 and 35 degrees.
Why not just instruct the umps on the field to error on the side of calling it a fair ball if they are uncertain. This way we would likely “play-out” more questionable calls than have the play stopped only to find the ball was fair. Then also don’t tell the booth ump to only over rule in cases of “indisputable evidence” as in football, but just say “most likely” or something similar.
And honestly how could the hitters complain. If the ump calls a foul on a fair ball, you’d still be hitting, but even if you’re awarded just a single, at least you got the single. And no matter how good you are a known single is better than going back to the batter’s box. This is particularly true if the count is not in your favor, as it likely wouldn’t be given that we know they would have at least 1 strike against them.
It’s a great point about a fair ball that is called foul.
Even if it isn’t totally equitable, you could create a rule that awards the hitter one base and moves everyone up one base. In many cases this would be short-changing the offense BUT it will never short-change the defense and more importantly, it is significantly better than just letting that error go.
I’d like to see greater use of ‘TV-Umpires’ in high-leverage situations. For example I’d allow them to intervene in ALL none-balls and strikes decisions in the post season. I’d also allow them the same power when a no-hitter is at stake after the sixth inning.
For low leverage situations, we could restrict the use of TV-Umpires if the speed of the game would be adversely affected.
Often, when turning double plays, the 2B or SS won’t even touch the bag. Are they going to start calling that? The logic of replay will eventually lead to a virtual strike zone, and maybe even electrodes implanted in equipment to indicate safe/out calls. We’ll get rid of Joe West yet.
If a fair ball gets called foul, I think we might just have to live with it. If a foul ball gets called fair, though, it is very, very easily remedied. This is not so different from the fumble/ruled down problem in football.
English Mariner makes a good point that replay should be available in the playoffs for everything but balls and strikes. In the ALDS last year, I can think of two Joe Mauer doubles down the left field line that were fair by a foot or more, but called foul, and would have drastically altered the series.
It seems fine to do that in the playoffs (if there’s a standard for what happens if a foul is made into a fair), but I’m not sure how you stop and start 4260 games in order to review heat of the moment fair/foul calls. How do you gauge where the runner should go if a foul call is overruled? A ground-rule double?
As for using it on safe/out calls, I think the 30 seconds of replay time could actually add to the drama of the moment. Could you imagine if Joyce calls him safe, the umpires confer while the stadium is dead silent, and then the call is reversed? It would be volcanic.
I’m not sure if anyone on your side of the atlantic is aware but this system is used in Rugby Union in Europe. On unclear plays a video umpire is asked to opine. The stadium get’s to hear him say either. “Try” or “Out of bounds” or something similar and it becomes a good moment for the fans to get on the edge of their seats about a big decision coming up. It only takes a minute at most for really inconclusive images. If it is inconclusive it is left to the decision on the field.
Tennis has hawk-eye, rugby and cricket have tv refs. It’s about time football (the sport where you kick a ball with your foot) and baseball introduced it too for those game changing and in Armando’s case, Life changing decisions.
Dave, how do you feel about appeals on check-swings? Seems like another area where replay would help, though I’m sure the blues usually get that right.
Check swings are actually a situation where the camera will not have a better angle or ability to see than the umpire’s eye. The umpire is closer than any camera, he’s seeing it in three dimensions and the frames per second can be less than required to see the almost imperceptible action of the bat.
Might be true, but the best angle on a check swing is generally from overhead somewhere, and obviously the umpire can’t see that.
Also, there’s already an appeal system in place with the first and third base umpires. As far as balls and strikes – looking, swinging or checking – the umpires should remain in place.
A “fifth umpire” kind of a system is already in place in Cricket (where it is actually the “third umpire”, since there are two umpires on the ground), which is as close a game to baseball as it can get. Mostly it is used by the on-ground umpires to review the run-out situations (which is similar to ground-out in baseball), catches which are not taken clearly. There is really no reason why it cannot be implemented in baseball as well, when it has been used in cricket for around 18 years now.
On strike zone- Can’t pitch F/X eventually become fast enough to replace the umpire there? It might not be fast enough now (though replays with the technology are shown with a few seconds) but that is simple a processing speed issue right?
A TV based- umpire would solve almost all other issues except fair and foul. For that it would to only use review in the case of a foul ball called fair, since that would allow the uncertain ump to simply call the ball fair and let the play be corrected if need. A fair ball called foul can’t be practically solved, but at least the margin of error would be slimmed down immensely without slowing games down significantly.
This is exactly the system I’ve been advocating, except that I don’t think the plays where there’s an aftermath cause all that much of a problem. For one thing, they’d be rare compared to straightforward safe/out calls. But for another, umpires already have to make judgment calls on “what would have happened,” on overthrows that go into the stands or dugout and occasionally on other “ground rule” types of situations. It’s very rare that that sort of decision is terribly controversial.
Even if it was, though, I’m entirely comfortable with some occasional uncertainty as to what base a guy ends up on if it means getting the safe/out calls right, to me are the much more important issue.
agreed. A ground-rule double is sort of the same thing. You just assume a guy would have gone two more bases in all instances even though it’s often wrong. It’s just the rule and people live with it. If there was some similar protocol for corrected calls, it would be fine, even if it doesn’t exactly replicate what would have happened if the call had been made correctly.
Yes, exactly. At least getting the fair/foul call right and coming up with some arbitrary rule about where the runners go in that situation is more correct than the alternative.
I feel the fair/foul calls might be the easiest to fix. Can’t there be some sensor that detects where the ball lands in real time, then have a green or red light flash somewhere? You might not even need an ump to make that call.
The umpire can figure out what reasonable “would” have happened just like the official scorer is charged with determining what “would” have happened had there not been an error. Would that runner have scored? If not, the run is unearned. This can be done. I like the idea of an umpire upstairs with TV screens and an earpiece. It would not really take very long, and I have always felt the person reviewing the replay should not be the same person that made the disputed call.
Couldn’t you just treat fair/foul the same as fan interference? General rule is a single with umpire’s discretion for a double if it heads to the corner or something like that?
I fail to understand how any baseball fan can feel that getting safe/out or fair/foul calls right is anywhere near as important as balls/strikes.
I’ve said for years that I would tithe for the rest of my life if that would bring fair, accurate ball/strike calls to baseball.
Is there anyone out there who agrees that balls/strikes are FAR more imprtant than all of the other stuff?
I agree that balls and strikes are the most fundamental calls and are probably the most-missed of all the calls. I think the problem is, we’re talking about replay here, and it seems like most people agree that replay should not be used for balls and strikes because there are so many disputed ball/strike calls that it would have far too great an impact on the pace of play.
Would I be in favor of leaving the ball/strike calls to a computer? I’m not sure.
The thing with balls and strikes is that I actually do think the human element makes the game more entertaining. The umpire/pitcher/catcher/hitter interplay is interesting and involved in almost every pitch. I couldn’t be sure until I sat and watched a whole game with just some ping sound instead of the umpire back there calling the game, but I just suspect it would be a bit duller.
Where I get hung up is fly balls with runners on. On a close play, the umpires call on a catch or a hit changes the runners actions. If the ump gets to decide where those runners go after the fact, I think they have too much influence over the game and it’s outcome.
But if they botch the out/trap type flyball call, don’t they effect the game more by screwing that up than by having to assign where the runners go once the out/safe call is correct?
I agree that neither is perfect, but I do think one is better than the other.
This seems workable. But checked swings? Balls and strikes maybe at some point given technological advances, but that seems to be getting a little ludicrous if you ask me. Minute adjustment for players height (or more than minute if someone sends up Eddie Gaedel III).
“I don’t want Tony LaRussa throwing flags on the field, and then Jim Joyce wandering into a tunnel somewhere for a few minutes.”
Exactly how I feel, and unfortunately, it seems it’s exactly how Sports in the USA seem to want to handle instant replay. Nothing kills the pace of the game like watching umps walk off the field to go become the man behind the curtain. If they just simply converge on the field quickly to discuss what they saw while someone is chatting in their ear about what can be seen from replays, the process becomes a lot less painful.
If it can be done as fast as umps can do it then it should be done. But I’d say that in a 162 game season, the results of a bad call (not counting balls and strikes) might change the outcome by 4 or 5 games.
In the case of the perfect game, I see no reason why the official scorer can’t just call it E-10, error on the umpire. Maybe Galaraga doesn’t get credited with a perfect game, but other pitchers that allow a batter to reach on a fielder’s error don’t get credited with perfect games either.
And in Toronto, but that’s getting no press.
Dave I agree largely with what you are saying but there are some situations that I think the TV Ump should cover that you didn’t mention:
Trapped catches – runners return to original base
Foul Tip strikeouts – TV Ump can determine if catcher caught it cleanly, and potentially if it actually was a foul tip.
Also, I don’t think balls and strikes should ever enter into the replay conversation.
I don’t think instant replay will necessarily slow down the game, if the folks on the field are only apprised of the decision (rather than, as you say, wandering into a tunnel somewhere.) Presumably, on the truly egregious bad calls, the manager is going to come out and have a “chat” with the ump anyway. In many cases, the replay could be completed practically before he reaches the ump, and certainly would be by the time he has addressed the ump’s ancestry and personal hygiene habits! 😉
Pitch F/x data on ball and strikes should at least be AVAILABLE to the umpire. I’m not sure if ML umpires carry a clicker, but I bet they do. It wouldn’t be hard for them to have a small electronic hand held device or wrist device that would indicate the position of the pitch according to the Pitch f/x data already available. Balls and strikes are still the umpires call, but he would at least have access to the pitch f/x data.