Last night I was talking with my friend, Kyle, who showed me BJ Upton's called third strike and subsequent tossing after vehemently arguing the call. I looked at this video a few times and, looking at the called 3rd strike, I said concluded that this pitch was too close for Upton to take. "Do you think it was a strike?" I do think that with two strikes, every ball player is told that you're supposed to expand your zone and fend off the close pitches. Upton went against that common teaching, and let that pitch go right on by.
Umpires are given a whole lot of flak when they call really close plays the other way, especially from fans whose teams are being robbed. We have the amazing technology to slow down a play and show it frame-by-frame if we want to do so, and yet, as many people quizzically wonder, Major League Baseball continues to stay away from in-game instant replay, currently only employing replay during questionable plays at the end of games.
If we can see the plays almost instantly and see that an umpire is wrong in his live calling of a play, why don't we use everything we can to make sure that everything is 100% correct? I wonder where you can even start here. Do we allow managers to stop play and demand that a call be reviewed because they think it is wrong? Do we employ some kind of system that the NFL uses (2 challenges, booth challenges during the final two minutes) or should we give this up to the game's umpires' discretions?
I don't have an opinion either way. A game is 9-innings and many games could possibly come down to one play that is right or wrong. I do know that Bud Selig is being very careful to not open a huge can of worms that he is showing too large for him to handle. If baseball should further expand instant replay, where does it go and where should it even stop?
I personally feel that Instant replay is a necessity for sports nowadays, especially football. HOWEVER, I feel that the organizations are abusing their "Instant Replay" privileges. A good example of IRA (Instant Replay Abuse) is the challenge flag in football. The player made a big play, but because of the IR, the opposing coach has the option to blindly challenge the play which could result in some bogus overruling such as "Oh, he didnt possess control of the ball because he was boggling it" when at normal speed it looked like a clean toss and catch.
ReplyDeleteHowever with baseball, I feel that instant replay should be obsolete for the same exact reasons. In football it is understandable to have IR, but in baseball the presence of IR ruins the trickery of the game. Some things are better left played at normal speed as opposed to slow motion.