Replay in baseball will make everything better, they said. It will help eliminate controversy, they said.
Well, Major League Baseball has had expanded replay for two years now. And though the system has indeed done its share of good, what we're seeing this postseason is baseball going through its own "tuck rule" moment.
You remember the tuck rule, right? You know. 2002 NFL divisional playoff game. Oakland Raiders vs. New England Patriots. Tom Brady. Charles Woodson. Snow-globe setting. Anything?
If not, the CliffsNotes version is that the Raiders seemed to have the Patriots dead to rights late in the fourth quarter after Woodson sacked Brady and knocked the ball loose, resulting in a Raiders recovery. The referees then went to the replay booth to confirm the call on the field, but it seemed like a mere formality. Everyone and their uncle knew it was a fumble.
But then, everyone and their uncle got introduced to the "tuck rule."
The referees dove into the the rule book and ruled that Brady had technically thrown an incomplete pass. What had been a turnover turned into a mere loss of down. That turned into a game-tying field goal. That led to a game-winning field goal. That ultimately led to the Patriots winning it all.
But unless you ask a Patriots fan, to this day the tuck rule still stands out as a key defeat for replay rather than a key victory. More to the point, it was really the first big example of how, just as easily as it can clear things up, replay can actually create more confusion by blurring the line between the "correct" call and the "right" call. With replay, the two are not always one and the same.
And if this MLB postseason is making anything clear, it's that this problem is not exclusive to football.
Now, let's be fair for at least one second. Not every replay this postseason has been the subject of controversy. There have been 17 replays so far, and the reality that most of them went off without a hitch proves that MLB's replay system isn't a lost cause.
But it's certainly easy to notice when the system falls short. And this postseason, those failures have highlighted how MLB's replay system is inherently flawed.
Take, for example, the sudden rise of FOOB replays.
Yes, FOOB is an acronym that I've just made up. It stands for "Foot Off Of Bag?" and—well, that should ring a bell. These are the ones that call attention to whether or not a baserunner was tagged out while very momentarily off the bag, and they're suddenly as prevalent as they are annoying.
There have been a handful of FOOB replays so far in the postseason. Fortunately, two of them—one on Ben Revere in Texas, and another on Rougned Odor in Toronto—were only irritating to the extent that they slowed down the action. Neither play resulted in a controversial call.
But then there's what happened to Alex Rios on Tuesday and, more egregiously, what happened with Terrance Gore in Houston earlier in the postseason:
Watching this play live, three things were evident:
- The throw by Jason Castro wasn't nearly in time.
- Luis Valbuena's tag wasn't the greatest.
- Gore finished off his steal attempt with a good slide.
Basically, this play consisted of the defense not making a play and the baserunner not making a mistake. Gore may have popped off the bag for a split second, but it was more due to physics than bad technique.
Given the particulars, by all rights Gore should have been called safe. But instead, the replay review zeroed in on that brief moment when Gore was off the bag and saw that Valbuena was actually tagging him out—even though he was tagging Gore more with his wrist than his glove.
And so, two forms of outrage were cued.
For many, this was a clear case of the "correct" call not being the "right" call. Gore may have been out according to the letter of the law, but saying so was pretty much the same thing as saying that Brady was actually throwing a forward pass. The umpires were consulting the proper rule, but said rule clearly didn't offer a realistic perception of the situation.
And even if you disagree with that notion, you should be able to agree that such replays must have consistent rulings. Therein lies another problem: They invite inconsistent rulings.
For example, consider how the Gore play compares to another postseason review involving Rougned Odor. We have to ask ourselves how it makes any sense that a tag like this could be ruled inconclusive...
...while a tag like this is ruled conclusive:
As much as any other pair of rulings, these two put side-by-side casts light on what's been one of the ongoing problems with replay ever since it was expanded last spring. Similar plays resulting in different rulings should be a rare phenomenon, but it's actually been all too frequent.
As for what's at the heart of this problem, it's easy to point a finger at how MLB decided its replay center should be run. Rather than strictly people whose one job is to review video and apply the rules, replay reviews are conducted by technicians and a revolving cast of umpires.
As such, the idea proposed by Chicago Cubs skipper Joe Maddon this summer makes a lot of sense.
“It just screams for an independent group there to really research the video,” Maddon said, via Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune. “That’s what I think it screams for, as opposed to working umpires who are actually on the field. I think you should get a bunch of nerds back there who know how to look at a videotape, and then come to a conclusion. I think it would be more interesting that way.”
But sadly, even making a move like that wouldn't necessarily solve the replay shortcomings highlighted by this postseason. It may be annoying when the specifics of the rule book result in a replay controversy, but the postseason has also proved that controversy can arise from there not being enough specifics in the rule book.
Cutting right to the, ahem, chase, let's talk about what happened with the Chase Utley play:
In the immediate aftermath of this play, the focus was all on whether or not Utley's slide into Ruben Tejada was dirty. That alone would have been enough fodder for a lasting controversy.
But it was what happened next that really upped the ante. Though Utley was initially ruled out, the umpires went to replay and ruled him safe on the basis that Tejada had never touched the bag—even though Utley never did either.
Ken Davidoff of the New York Post broke down why the umpires made that call. Though the so-called "neighborhood play" on double-play attempts at second base isn't supposed to be a reviewable play, the umpires concluded that the rule didn't apply because of how it wasn't a traditional neighborhood play.
However, Marc Carig of Newsday offered a good argument against that reading of the play:
In so many words: Ruling that as a force play rather than a neighborhood play wasn't entirely unreasonable in theory, but it was definitely at odds with what happened in reality.
As for why Utley was ruled safe even though neither he nor Tejada touched the second-base bag, Davidoff wrote that Utley was not obligated to touch second base once he was initially ruled out. Rather, the pressure was on Tejada to tag him as a precaution.
But here's a question: Why on Earth would Tejada think to do so when he's staring directly at this?
With the Gore play, we were looking at a perfect example of how replay can create a divide between the correct call and the right call. What we're looking at here is something even more infuriating: How replay can complicate a situation to a point where even the correct call is subject to interpretation.
As such, this is where more specific language in the rule book might actually be help. Rather than leaving it to the judgement of the umpires, perhaps it would be best if the rule book clearly defined what constitutes a neighborhood play and what doesn't. Such language may not have saved Tejada from a broken leg, but it may have saved the New York Mets from what turned into a loss.
While we're on the topic, there was another instance in the postseason in which more specific language in the rule book might have been able to help.
Remember in Game 5 of the American League Division Series when Russell Martin's throw back to the pitcher clanked off Shin-Soo Choo's bat, resulting in Odor scoring the go-ahead run? Yeah, that was a totally nutso situation that ultimately wound up going to replay just so the umpires could make sure their ruling was correct. When it was indeed deemed correct, Toronto fans went bonkers.
Mind you, the controversy wasn't so much the replay as it was the ruling itself. It gave the Rangers the run because Choo didn't get in the way of Martin's throw on purpose, meaning the fault was his. It was an awkwardly timed call, sure, but it was technically correct.
But as Eno Sarris of FanGraphs noted, what stood out was how Choo would not have even been in the way if MLB had not required players to stay in the box as part of the new pace-of-play rules. What MLB forgot was additional language that would protect against freak accidents where nobody is really at fault, like what happened on that play. Had the league thought to do that, replay might have been able to bail Martin and the Blue Jays out of a tight spot that they didn't deserve.
If there's a bright side to all this, it's that MLB's replay system is still young enough to be in the beta testing phase. As John Schuerholz freely admitted, the mere implementation of replay last year was only a start. The league never expected it to be perfect right off the bat, or even two or three years after implementation.
But even knowing that, it's still jarring every time the holes in the system are brought to light.
It makes for frustrating viewing, and it makes replay out to be a villain. And even though our better selves know that it's more like a flawed hero, it doesn't do anyone any good to simply accept the "flawed" part. Hopefully, the league will learn what it can and adjust accordingly.
The thing is, though, there's no ignoring that creeping sense that we're never going to run out of things to criticize about baseball's replay system.
Not as long as we know that the NFL has been constantly tinkering with its own replay system for easily over a decade by now, even going so far as to finally kill the tuck rule in 2013. Still, you're not going to find an NFL fan who actually thinks the league's replay system has eliminated controversy. There's no reason to think that a replay system for an equally complex sport like baseball can be any better.
This is to say the thought we all have about replay in baseball now is probably never going to go away: It sure can solve some problems, but it can't solve them all.
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