That's why there should be a challenge system, like in the NFL.

There should be replay in baseball. They don't have to consult on every single play, but where the play is really close and it could change the outcome of the game, then you should use replay.

Same argument about time being wasted to review every play was made about football. But using replay in football has worked out so well. Baseball could use kind of the same format.

The real win is the elimination of the umpire for ball/strike calls. This is something that doesn't require "baseball knowledge", is very difficult to get right all the time, and is not something humans do well.

Of course, umpires will resist it to the death, and we'll continue to get crappy umpiring.

There likely will continue to be a role for umpires in all the plays on the field, since those require real-time calls from the right vantage point, and it's impossible to get cameras with the right angle on everything ... today, at least.

However, on balls out of play (home runs and ball/strike calls), the umpires aren't necessary and won't do as good a job as a camera with a reasonable expert system behind it.

No replay, it'll slow the game down way too much.

No replays please!

I prefer the human element, even if it goes wrong sometimes.

I prefer the human element... until it hurts my team. Give me replay any day of the week. This doesn't have to slow the game down. In fact, it may help speed it up if it prevents Lou Piniella from throwing bases.

David, if they have a booth umpire, like they do in college football, the game could easily be sped up. That article clearly referenced the Pierzynski play yesterday. Well, that play took at least 7 minutes. The players argued, Joe Maddon came out and argued for at least 4 minutes, then the umpires conferred, they got the call wrong. It took a long time. If you have a replay system in place, that play takes at most 2 minutes. Booth umpire reviews the play, radios or phones the crew chief, overturn the call, game on. I don't see how it's going to take any longer than it takes for umpires to argue with coaches and confer in a group.

Tyler, why do you feel a manager still won't come out to complain if a replay call goes against him?

Do they in football?

Why does everybody who wants instant replay talk about how great it works in football? It's a god awful system. It affects calls on the field, it slows down the game to a crawl, the refs still manage to get calls wrong a good amount of the time, and you can't possibly review everything. Football can have it, but hopefully baseball has enough sense to realize just because ESPN makes a huge issue of it doesn't mean fans are all for it.

The A.J. play yesterday was a judgement call anyway. It's like a pass interference call in football; it's a complete gray area. No sport that has instant replay allows plays like that to be reviewed.

The A.J. play yesterday was a judgement call anyway. It's like a pass interference call in football; it's a complete gray area. No sport that has instant replay allows plays like that to be reviewed.

What I don't like about IR is that it has forced sports like football to change and complicate their most fundamental rules to accommodate or to take advantage of the technology. We have it, we ought to maximize it.
A fumble used to be simple: if the ball carrier lost possession before the whistle blew, it was a fumble. A tackle used to be simple: you were down when the whistle blew. A catch was simple to define. So was the act of throwing a forward pass, being in or out of bounds, crossing the goal line. Today all of those fundamental activities have become unduly complex and technical due to the ability of IR to allow you to look at them more closely. Did his knee touch the ground before the ball was loose? Did he have control before he was hit? Did the ball touch the grass before the receiver cradled it? Did part of him pass over the goal line pylon before he landed out of bounds? And on and on.

You now have rules in the NBA that pertain to the final 3 tenths of a second of a game! Is that really necessary and is it beneficial to the game? What if you just had the clocks time in seconds only, not fractions of a second. Would that really hurt the game?

Baseball will surely follow the same path if/when IR is adopted: redefining what is a catch, what is a strike, what is a swing, what is a tag, to the nth degree of technicality. Who needs it? Does it really make the game more enjoyable? More rules and more complexity means more disagreements and more controversy, not less. It also means more dependence on technology in order to play the game.

IR will be adopted and it's use will be expanded throughout baseball and way beyond HR calls. The game will not be better for it.

Advanced technology has not rid sports of cheating or drug use, it has not really reduced injuries overall (it has perhaps reduced their severity and improved recovery, but I do not believe games lost to injury have gone down significantly over the years, but perhaps have gone up), and it will not rid sports of mistakes and controversies. It just changes their nature and adds layers of complexity to the games.

What I don't like about IR is that it has forced sports like football to change and complicate their most fundamental rules to accommodate or to take advantage of the technology. We have it, we ought to maximize it.
A fumble used to be simple: if the ball carrier lost possession before the whistle blew, it was a fumble. A tackle used to be simple: you were down when the whistle blew. A catch was simple to define. So was the act of throwing a forward pass, being in or out of bounds, crossing the goal line. Today all of those fundamental activities have become unduly complex and technical due to the ability of IR to allow you to look at them more closely. Did his knee touch the ground before the ball was loose? Did he have control before he was hit? Did the ball touch the grass before the receiver cradled it? Did part of him pass over the goal line pylon before he landed out of bounds? And on and on.

You now have rules in the NBA that pertain to the final 3 tenths of a second of a game! Is that really necessary and is it beneficial to the game? What if you just had the clocks time in seconds only, not fractions of a second. Would that really hurt the game?

Baseball will surely follow the same path if/when IR is adopted: redefining what is a catch, what is a strike, what is a swing, what is a tag, to the nth degree of technicality. Who needs it? Does it really make the game more enjoyable? More rules and more complexity means more disagreements and more controversy, not less. It also means more dependence on technology in order to play the game.

IR will be adopted and it's use will be expanded throughout baseball and way beyond HR calls. The game will not be better for it.

Advanced technology has not rid sports of cheating or drug use, it has not really reduced injuries overall (it has perhaps reduced their severity and improved recovery, but I do not believe games lost to injury have gone down significantly over the years, but perhaps have gone up), and it will not rid sports of mistakes and controversies. It just changes their nature and adds layers of complexity to the games.

Baseball is a game terrifically suited for instant replay. Very, very few gray areas compared to other sports. I say bring it on!

Rich, the reason the manager won't come out and argue after an instant replay decision goes against them is there won't be anyone to argue with. The umpires on the field had nothing to do with the replay decision.

A challenge system could work fine in baseball. Give each team one challenge per game to avoid replays on every close call, in addition to using replay on home runs calls. No big deal.

At most you'd get maybe three or four replays in a game. That's not going to stretch games to five hours, especially if you force the pitchers to work faster, which they should do, anyway.

As for balls and strikes, of course the machines can do it better now. Anybody who watches a televised game with the technology on the screen can see that. But there's no way you'll get the umps out from behind the plate.

George S makes excellent points about the potential of IR or other innovations to have the unintended consequence of adding a layer of unwanted complexity to the game. In responding to a perceived umpiring problem, why should the first impulse be a technological solution? How about trying to improve the quality of human umpiring first? Perhaps the implicit threat of a diminished future role for human umpires will spark initiatives to retrain or remove the poor umps, with greater use of technology to review, train and rate umpires. As S.J. Gould said, strikes have context, and that's part of the game's human element. Has a Tom Glavine earned the called down/away strike four inches off the black? Or should every player be treated as if it's his first day in the big leagues every day by a soul-less mechanical system? For better or worse baseball seems to have evolved with a bias toward the romantic vs. the mechanistic vibe of the NFL and its imitators.

Everyone has said replay will NOT be used for balls/strikes. Anyone who brings that up is just using a straw man.

As far as the football comparison goes, I think some kind of prudent challenge system might be appropriate, and the standard of "conclusive evidence" to overturn the original call probably makes sense - but the comparison of IR's effect on football game flow/times to its potential effect on baseball doesn't really work. Forward arm motion, precise instants at which knees fall vs. loose ball, etc., are much more nuanced calls than would come up in baseball, particularly in the limited aspect they are currently discussing. The addition of the fact that there are approximately 20+ people on the field in close proximity complicates the calls in football - indeed, are often the reason for a missed call - whereas in baseball those obstructions are rare; the reason calls are missed, for the most part, is distance and viewing window (i.e. the ball strikes the wall in 1/1000th of a second). IR all but completely solves both of those issues.

As far as managers arguing results of IR calls, just say they can't, plain and simple. Eject them. They already do it for managers coming out to argue balls/strikes.

Just to pile it on - to KI's point about umps' "romantic" calls of balls/strikes: this drives me CRAZY. Giving a more experienced pitcher a call they don't give a less experienced pitcher - sometimes even in the SAME GAME - is atrocious.

KI, the problem with improving the humans who are actually doing the umpiring is that the humans are unionized. It's very difficult to fire umpires. Their union is very strong and very organized. So resolving the human element could take several years if not a decade or more. Where as, they could hammer out a legitimate replay system, with many or most of the kinks worked out within the offseason/spring training.

I agree no replays!

There is only one correct call. Truth is an absolute. The call should be made correctly, taking as little time as possible. 1, then 2. They are not tradeoffs.

Well, it's happening. And it's happening now. MLB makes it official in 29 minutes.