Major League Baseball announced that it will likely start to use more video replays to help umpires make the right calls in the near future, possibly as early as next season.Joe Torre, who is the executive vice president of baseball operations for MLB, said the idea will be discussed in more detail during the upcoming owners’ meeting in August.
Torre said instant replay will never be used to determine balls and strikes, but it could be used for just about everything else. Torre said there’s no deadline to start using more replays, but many of them could be implemented in 2014.
He admitted that the game could be improved by expanding the use if replays and he came to this conclusion last season when an umpire blew a tag call during a playoff game at New York’s Yankee Stadium. He said the umpire made the incorrect call because he was moving on the play at the time to get a better view. Torre added that after the game fans were talking more about the missed call than the game itself, and he took notice of it.
Torre said he’s been asked many times why the MLB doesn’t place a couple of video replay judges in a booth like the NHL does. However, he said three umpires recently reviewed a video replay and still made the wrong call, so it’s not as easy as it sounds. Torre said it’s still often hard to call a play one way or another, even after watching it multiple times on a screen from several different camera angles.
MLB has admitted that its umpires have made several wrong calls so far this season and they’ve been taking a lot of heat because of it. These included a home run that the umpires ruled as a double, but replays showed the ball was hit out of the park.
Torre stuck up for the umpires by saying they have a very tough job and there’s a lot of pressure on them. He added that the umpires always try to make the right call, but it’s just human nature that they might miss a few. He feels some of the heat they’re taking is due to the way the rules are interpreted and video replay wouldn’t help solve this.
MLB is thinking about adding a fifth umpire who would watch the game from a special location and/or instituting a challenge system for the managers. Torre said his office is just trying to do what is best for MLB and what makes the most sense. He doesn’t want to stop the game every inning and ruin the rhythm of the contest since some games can already stretch into three-hour affairs.
Bud Selig, MLB commissioner, said he’s definitely interested in expanding video replay for certain situations, but couldn’t predict when it would be put into place. He said a lot of work has already been done, but there’s still a lot more to do in the future, including trying to figure out what the cost would be.
Selig added that people would need to be trained on video replay and everybody must be well prepared before its use is expanded.
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