The ML general managers recently voted 25-5 in favor of the limited use of instant replay to decide close calls. Each of these reviewable calls are related to home runs such as whether the ball was fair or foul, whether a fan interfered or whether it hit on the other side of the fence or not. As far as this goes for those who are interested in seeing more spread use, due to the continual nature of the game and the need for instant and irreversible calls it would be difficult to expand much more than this. This is why it seems strange to me to go through all of this effort. Not only are these close calls few and far between they are rarely missed by umpires. If anything should be questioned in the current game with respect to umpiring it should be balls and strikes. According to rules of baseball managers aren't allowed to argue balls and strikes. Even so these constant calls are still a hotbed of debate within almost every single game. It was most noticeable to me during the playoffs when umpires routinely missed a large percentage of calls by a significant margin. Yes, most of these games included the team I call my own, but as those whom I watched these games with can attest to, these calls were bad no matter who you root for. As a side note, the umpires missed these calls regardless of what FoxTrax has to say. Fox put together that horribly scaled system to make everything look like a bad call in order to incite controversy and keep people watching. Now with many stadiums already having Questech installed monitoring umpires it would not be a huge stretch to being letting a computerized system call balls and strikes completely. For those who agree with this proposal more power to you, but I have to say we are few and far between. Many "purists" that I have spoken to concerning this issue have professed many qualms most nearly adding to "but I don wanna." However, as a far minded individual I will present and counter a number of arguments against my proposed system.
First is the idea that this system will erase the dynamic of the unique strike zones between umpires. This is certainly not the case. A computer could be programmed with many varying strike zones to mock the zones currently called by ML umpires. This system would in no way set a strict uniform strike zone for every game until the end of time. Now you say, if there will be different strike zones, why even use a computer system. One word: consistency. The reason that an umpire is bad or is calling a bad game is usually not because he is making bad calls on where the ball is entering the strike zone. It is usually to do a change within the strike zone and a change in which types of pitches are called strikes and which are not. Most baseball players and managers would agree that as long as the ump is calling them within reason they can adjust to any strike zone provided it is consistently called that way. Thus, a computer would allow for a huge increase of consistency within the calling of balls and strikes within the context of a single game. Next, comes to the malfunctioning of the system. This would be treated in the same way as if any of the other umpires were to get hurt and not be able to continue. The backup umpire would be summoned onto the field and the game would proceed just as it does now. Ironically this argument does not seem to satisfy those against this idea. Thus, no matter how you slice it a computer system to call the balls and strikes would greatly increase the quality of the game and remove a great deal of doubt and animosity. So if this is where the game is heading as far as the proposals for limited use of instant replay then I am all in favor, otherwise, perhaps we are wasting out time here.....
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