The reversal didn't set well with Red Sox manager John Farrell, who was immediately ejected for arguing the call, which is one of the replay rules that was established. I'm not sure if Farrell's interpreting the rules incorrectly or simply still upset about the blown replay review on Saturday, but his argument that there wasn't "clear, undisputable evidence" is simply wrong. (Although, if you ask the Red Sox fan who wrote this piece for Sports Illustrated, he wasn't wrong.) He saw the same replay I did. The ball's clearly not in Napoli's glove yet when Cervelli's foot hit the bag. I'll tell you what, here's what we saw on the video board. You make the call:
Farrell's comments were all the rage today, leading to a full-scale discussion about the pros and cons of the replay system, which has been in use for a grand total of two weeks. Tony La Russa is in charge of replay for Major League Baseball and he's just shrugged off any criticism of the process so far. As La Russa pointed out, it's "premature" to question the integrity of the system. After all, Baseball has had instant replay for two weeks after going without it for 185 years. With such a drastic change, there were bound to be some hiccups.
Going into Monday, there had been 185 games played in the Majors this season. In those 185 games, 84 calls were reviewed. Of those 84, only 28 were reversed. That's a success rate of 33 percent, or slightly lower than the success rate of NFL coaches (and the NFL has had replay for years). More than anything, the use of replay has proven that the umpires actually get the call right most of the time. But sometimes they do get it wrong. That's the point of using replay in the first place.
Unfortunately, that's not what you hear about. You only hear about the controversial stuff. You only hear about John Farrell getting ejected because he thought he got screwed (the fact that this happened in a nationally-televised Sunday night game probably didn't help). Or the game on Saturday between the same two teams, where the umpires had replay at their disposal yet somehow managed to still get the call wrong even after using it. MLB even acknowledged that the umpires screwed up that one.
Or the play at first base in the Washington-Atlanta game on Saturday night. That was our second Nationals-Braves replay moment this season. In Washington's home opener on April 4, Ian Desmond hit what was ruled an inside-the-park home run on the field, then changed to a ground rule double after the review. Atlanta ended up winning the game 2-1, and Nationals manager Matt Williams wasn't happy afterwards. Once again, though, the play was correctly overturned. See for yourself:
Criticism is always going to be louder than support. That's just the way things go in our society. The funny thing is these critics are the same people that were yelling the loudest that MLB needed to adopt replay. Well, you can't have it both ways! Either you're a fan of replay or you aren't. You can't change that opinion just because a call went against your team.
Replay has come to Baseball and it's here to stay. The system isn't perfect. Nobody expected it to be. But it has achieved its purpose. They're getting calls right, and by doing so, the right teams are winning games. Isn't that what everyone wanted in the first place?
No comments:
Post a Comment