Video Replay

A lot of non-Giants fans are having a field day with with request because they feel like they've gotten the short end of bad calls in Giants games for as long as the teams have existed. Wouldn't the Giants have more to lose from video replays? Haha.

Yes, I myself remember some of the bad decisions that have gone the Giants way. I like the idea of video replays - but they need to be closely controlled otherwise you would have them for every strikeout pitch.

- ...you would have them for every strikeout pitch.

That poses an interesting question: if tennis can have electronic sensors to judge whether a ball has landed inside or outside the court lines, can baseball not have electronic monitoring of the strike zone?

Questec [Wikipedia].

In the majors it was/is used to evaluate umpires' calls, not to make the calls themselves.

I think you'll find that video (or instant) replay is tightly controlled in any sport that has introduced it. It wouldn't take much imagination to introduce it on a limited basis for calls that can clearly be determined with a replay (which wouldn't include balls and strikes of course). As with the newly introduced system in tennis, teams could be restricted to a certain number of appeals per inning, which would prevent frivolous use of the system by managers.

Here's a Wikipedia reference which gives an outline of how instant replay works in a number of sports.

And here's an MSNBC article covering the first use of instant replay in tennis, which was this March at the Nasdaq-100 Open.

I'm all for instant replay - although it might give the fans fewer excuses when their teams lose.

I like both the ideas of electronic monitoring of the strike zone and instant replay. Instant replay I think should be restricted to a seperate umpire off field. Thus a manager can appeal and the appeal is referred off field. I would also like to see the umpires be allowed to call for a replay if they felt doubts about a call.

Why don't we have robots play the game too? Come on. These games are already too long as it is. Sure these guys make bad calls sometimes, but that's part of the game, the human element.

- ... but that's part of the game, the human element.

Yes, I've heard this argument before. I've never quite understood how having an off-field umpire checking to make sure a call is correct would constitute taking out the human element.

Frank Deford expressed this more eloquently than I ever could in a Sports Illustrated article last year:

I love the argument the National Pastime old fogies use in denying what is right before our eyes. They say, "We don't want to lose the human element." I wonder if they say that when they send their star player to the hospital to get operated on? "Oh, no. No arthoscopic surgery, thank you. Just the human element, please. A scalpel to gouge and a bullet for him to bite on."

It was the human element that invented television, which allows the whole world except the poor umpires to see if the ball was really fair or foul, or whether the ball hit the batter or whether the outfielder trapped the ball and so forth. Basically, National Pastime Luddites are saying, "We don't want to lose the human incompetence. We'd rather be pure and wrong and look stupid before the world."

Actually, predecessors of the current National Pastime blockheads used to be much more modern. Way back in 1895, they changed the rules to eliminate the human element so that an infielder couldn't purposely drop certain pop flies and profit by his mistake. It's called the infield fly rule. It's worked for 110 years. So I would order the National Pastime King Canutes to get rid of the human element and accept the human advance that is instant replay.

Having instant replay in baseball wouldn't be as bad it sounds. Though it should only be used on plays that can be questioned and not on balls and strikes. Just like football, you should have two cases in any game were that can be applied. It would add to the depth of strategy in the game.