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[Golfhaus]

I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet... what do y'all think of baseball's trying to get instant replay installed and ready to go... not for next year, but for August?

[Arachno-capitalist]

Fine by me. Instant replay is fine for any call which is conclusive. Balls and strikes are judgement calls, but a home run either is or isn't

[Carlos del Vaca]

I'd like it for home run calls and long fair/foul calls.  That's about it.  Those are usually high-impact plays, and wouldn't take that long to figure out on video.

[Golfhaus]

I would add safe/out to that, but only at the plate. What I worry about is that they'll end up with an NFL-style red flag that the manager can throw three times a game.

Although if they do go to it, I insist that they give the manager one of those t-shirt cannons to fire the signal onto the field.

[jaydub]

Maybe trailing a cloud of confetti and noisemakers.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I would be unopposed to a *****ic ump that calls ball/strike, foul/fair, homerun/not.

[Victoria Waterfield]

I would be unopposed to a #####ic ump that calls ball/strike, foul/fair, homerun/not.

Even if it were Liebot?

[iron_felix]

The A's used to have a #####ic rabbit that fed balls to the (human) umpire.  Maybe it's not that far-fetched to take the extra step.  EDIT:  On a related note, see this, particularly the last minute or so.

It does seem a bit counterintuitive, though.  Isn't MLB is trying to come up with ways to shorten games?

[Carlos del Vaca]

They are, but they refuse to consider the two most obvious means:  1.  Tell the pitcher to fuck*ng pitch and the batter to stay in the fuck*ng batter's box rather than stepping out and adjusting his jock after every pitch.  2.  Cut the amount of time between innings (which means cutting ad revenue, so fuck that noise).

(I'm feeling profane today, please excuse the fuck outta me.)

[CortJstr]

They are, but they refuse to consider the two most obvious means:  1.  Tell the pitcher to fuck*ng pitch and the batter to stay in the fuck*ng batter's box rather than stepping out and adjusting his jock after every pitch.  2.  Cut the amount of time between innings (which means cutting ad revenue, so fuck that noise).

(I'm feeling profane today, please excuse the fuck outta me.)

I'm curious what professional sport has the worst  play time:tv time ratio. I've read that during a 3.5 hour football game the ball is in play for about 16 minutes. Baseball has to be about the same. I'm sure there are lots of olympic sports like diving and archery that are even worse. Rugby has to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.

[Carlos del Vaca]

The last few minutes of a basketball game (if it's not a blowout), either college or pro, are usually excruciating, with shitloads of timeouts.  One of the things I like about hockey:  one timeout per team for the whole game. As such a frantic ending in a one-goal game doesn't get interrupted over and over again.

[littlefallsmets]

The difficulty with making EVERYTHING electronically reviewable is...

Well, they'd quickly review every single goddamned pitch, hoping to gain advantage from the replay.

And certainly every bang-bang play at first and home, as well.

Just to "see" if they could get help from it and... I wouldn't blame them in that scenario because the name of the game is to win by any means.

So you gotta not let that genie outta the bottle.

But for home run calls and fair-foul calls, initiated by the umps, sure. It'll happen maybe twice a game in most situations and it makes sense.

[littlefallsmets]

I think I was more saying...

If you make balls and strikes electronically reviewable, even if only by the umpire's perogative, eventually there'll be SO many people complaining about when the replay was and was not used that it'll devolve into one of the following:

a.) Multiple players and coaches getting tossed every game.

b.) The media so obnoxiously obsessing on every pitch that watching the game on teevee becomes awful.

c.) So much pressure coming down after review is in that eventually they just make review calls the parlance of players and managers as well... at first, they only get so many reviews a game or whatever and then the first time a call is blown after they've used up all their reviews, it goes out the window and all games are suddenly ten hours long.

Every fanbase everywhere is convinced that the games are fixed against them and now that sports media believes that they get better ratings by being homers, so do those the local sports media and... oh Christ... I don't want that noise at all.

It is bad enough having to occasionally listen to Vic The Brick talk about the Lakers as though they are goddamned avatars of Vishnu here to cleanse us of our sins... I seriously don't need that out of baseball too.

[littlefallsmets]

No no, I'm mostly with you.

I'm just... I'm really just mostly questioning how much review can get involved until you open the floodgates too much and the eventual result is every call being reviewable from the dugouts.

I think if it is kept to the home-run calls and the fair-foul calls and only the ump can initiate... then we're probably not so far that Pandora's Box doesn't fly open.

I'm mostly saying... any farther than that and we're probably past the point of no return.

[JorgeFabregas]

Plus, follow me on this: A machine would call a marginal strike on Ted Williams, Teddy Mother Fucking Ballgame his own self.

Interesting thing, that. Frank Thomas has been compared to Ted Williams in terms of his eye. On another board I'm on, someone claims to have seen QuesTec reports for the major leagues. He saw these reports when QuesTec was trying to pitch their services to the Japanese league.

Anyway, he says that the reports showed that the average umpire was accurate to within 2 inches of the outside corner. Whereas Thomas was accurate to within an inch.

So what's my point here? Not sure. I guess if the machine can tell that a hitter has a better eye than umpires, then maybe the machine would call a better game. Not that I'm advocating that.