MLB Examining Possibilities For Replay Review In 2013

It is with an air of weary resignation that I write about replay review again. Why “weary resignation”? Because it should have happened by now -- you’ve seen me call for replay review here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and and I’m as sick of writing about it as you are probably sick of hearing it from me.

The blown calls had gotten so egregious that a standard baseball joke went: “When it happens to the Yankees in a playoff game, then it’ll get changed.” That joke was repeated by Jon Morosi of Fox Sports, perhaps only half- jokingly:

Major League Baseball has been edging toward adding replay review to other calls besides the current system, which reviews home run calls.

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan reports that the edging will soon become actual testing:

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig spoke to members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in an annual tradition Tuesday morning, the pre-All-Star-Game news conference. Did you know that people in baseball don’t want more replay review? According to Bud, that’s the truth:

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig reiterated that baseball will not expand instant replay until 2013, and said Tuesday he believes the “appetite for more replay in the sport is very low.“Maybe he said this after a full breakfast, because the appetite among most baseball fans, at the very least, for more replay, is quite high. There’s no real need to reiterate all the reasons for replay review, or post more obviously bad calls here. You know the sport needs more review. I know the sport needs more review. Fortunately, we’re getting at least some more review in 2013:

Bad umpiring taketh, and bad umpiring giveth.

Mets fans are presumably happy about the latter, but I will argue that blown calls are, accounting for all things, a net negative. We gain lore, and things like the first-ever Mets no-hitter. We lose justice, and things like Armando Galarraga throwing a freaking perfect game.

A few weeks ago, Commissioner Bud Selig told a group of folks gathered in Wisconsin for a “sports and society” conference that he’d received “very little pressure” to add more video replay to baseball games. Selig’s remarks came as a surprise to many baseball analysts and fans, who’ve noticed a considerable number of missed calls and other umpire controversies this season.

Perhaps Selig (finally) heard the outcry. Less than a week after the Commissioner’s Wisconsin remarks, Jayson Stark of ESPN.com reported that Major League Baseball was seriously considering adopting a centralized video-review process. Al Yellon explained the details in this post, but they’re worth repeating here:

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan wrote a 1,500-word epic article Friday on the need for replay review, featuring various blown calls and blowups involving umpires Laz Diaz and Mark Wegner this week.

There was also this nugget which could go a long way toward explaining why Bud Selig has dragged his feet so long on this issue:

Blown call after blown call. We see them weekly, if not more often, and sometimes they can change the outcome of games.

Better late than never.

Last week, Commissioner-for-Life Bud Selig told a Wisconsin audience he doesn’t think there’s any call for more replay review in baseball:

“I’ve had very, very little pressure from people who want to do more,” Selig said.

It hasn’t happened. And, says Fox Sports’ Jon Paul Morosi, don’t hold your breath waiting:

Joe Torre, MLB’s executive vice president for baseball operations, told me Wednesday that instant replay does not have an official place on the agenda at the owners meetings next week.

The runner was called out, which he might have been in an alternate reality, but not here on Earth.

At the risk of sounding like the proverbial broken record, I’ll just link to the five other previous features I have written on this topic in the past year. The need for replay is obvious, and I don’t want to belabor the issue, but perhaps you should hear it from some of the baseball people who were actually involved in the game.

We were promised more replay review in 2012. No, seriously, we were: I wrote about it right here at Baseball Nation last November. This Ken Rosenthal tweet was part of my article:

New CBA will expand instant replay to include fair/foul and “trapped” ball plays, subject to discussions between #MLB and umpires.

In the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, there are three things you would probably notice on television …

One, the addition of another Wild Card in each league. You’ll definitely notice that one next October.

The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) brought along quite a few changes -- free-agent compensation rankings, caps on amateur spending, the hilarious competitive balance draft -- but one of the parts that almost no one complained about was an informal commitment to expanded instant replay.

Well, about that. From the Associated Press:

Video review will be expanded under baseball’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement. From August 2008 through the end of the 2011 season, umpires were authorized to use instant replay only to resolve home run/no-home run disputes. The new agreement calls for the use of instant replay to resolve fair-or-foul calls, whether a line drive was caught or trapped, and fan-interference calls around the ballpark.

The CBA is an agreement only between the owners and players. The major-league umpires -- as represented by the World Umpires Association -- haven’t yet approved the expanded replay. MLB is in discussions with the umpires union to iron out the details: how will umpires decide on the field that instant replay is warranted; will umpires leave the field of play to review the play themselves, as is currently done with home run/no-home run calls; and when will the new rules go into effect, among others.

One of the most wretched sets of buzzwords in sports is “competitive balance.” The NFL is supposed to have competitive balance because a 16-game season allows for unexpected runs of success. The NBA is supposed to have competitive balance because half of the teams in the league make the playoffs, even if it’s almost impossible for a low seed to advance more than a round. The NHL is a collection of professional hockey teams, and they sometimes even have televised games, which is just adorable.

Since then, the Twins won six division titles in ten years. The Marlins won another World Series. The Rays won a pennant. Brad Pitt might win an Oscar. It’s a different world, and competitive balance isn’t exactly the hot term around baseball anymore. Until now, that is. Enter the Competitive Balance Lottery, one of the more ridiculous things to come out of the new collective bargaining agreement. Jonathan Mayo explains:

Once upon a time, major league baseball teams had to give up major league players, from what was called a “compensation pool”, if they signed a free agent under certain conditions; free agents were separated into Type A (major league compensation), Type B (draft pick compensation) and Type C (no compensation).

Over time, teams began gaming the system, to the point where certain clubs were able to stockpile draft choices. Harrumphing loudly, the Powers That Be declared that this system must be changed, and so it has been; no more “Type A” and “Type B” free agents; only players who get high-dollar offers will rate compensation.

All baseball fans should give credit to MLB and MLBPA negotiators, who have agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement that extends labor peace for five more years. By the end of this deal, there will be 21 consecutive years without a labor stoppage in baseball. There are a number of important things agreed to by the two parties, but to me, the most important change is this one:

Big changes are coming to Major League Baseball. Changes to instant replay. Changes to the amateur draft. Changes to the process for signing international players. Changes to player compensation. Changes to the free-agent signing process. Changes to drug testing. Changes to the playoffs.

What are the changes? How will they work? Who are the winners and losers? We attempt to answer these questions in this breakdown of the new MLB labor deal. We will provide additional information and analysis as details emerge.

Remember the Major League Baseball strike? I had kind of forgotten about it, and then I was reminded of it last night. It’s been a long time. And it’ll be a long time until the next one. Players and owners have been trying to work out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement for a while, and according to Ken Rosenthal, on Thursday, they have reached a deal.

Full details won’t be available until Monday, when a formal announcement is made, but Rosenthal says the deal is five years in length, which will give MLB at least 21 straight years of labor peace. That’s a nice thing for us to hear while the NBA crumbles. Maybe that’s an unfair characterization, but I know there aren’t any games, and I know there are supposed to be games. The NBA is in trouble. MLB is not.