Sports Daily: Enhanced Replay is Here, Your Thoughts?

[RaychelSnr]

It did take almost fifteen years, but at this time I'd like to take a moment and officially welcome Major League Baseball to the 21st century. It seems natural that America's pastime could get stuck in the past. But it also seemed obvious to many of us that when Little League baseball figured out a way to make instant replay work, perhaps the professional version of the sport needed to put down the Sears catalog and start shopping online.

Expanded replay for the MLB in 2014 will be no small step for the sport. The "in the neighborhood" play for force-outs at second base is still off limits, but essentially every other play in the game is up for a manager's challenge. Team's can have an employee designated to check for chances to challenge who then can call the dugout to inform the manager. If the challenge is successful, managers will be given an additional challenge. After the 7th inning umpires may initiate challenges given that a team hasn't unsuccessfully challenged previously in the game.

Fans of manager-umpire arguments might be feeling disappointed along with the baseball purists. After a certain point of heated debate, umpires are allowed to confront the manager and force him to decide if he wants to challenge the play -- but will disagreements even take place on the field now that managers can take the debate straight to the video?

Sound Off: What are your initial thoughts regarding the MLB's expanded replay in 2014?

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[Lovesports]

Great for baseball

[yougo1000]

Good idea. Just wish there were 2 challenges for the first 6 innings and 1 more for the rest of the game.

[Kirby_SCEA]

I'll be interested to see if and how MLB and its umpires combat managers trying to use replays strategically to throw off opposing players. For example, I could definitely see managers challenging a play that's not really that close just to disrupt the flow of a pitcher who is on a roll against them.

[simgamer0005]

Video replay doesn't belong in baseball. It interrupts the flow of the game. A lot of the changes to baseball in recent years haven't been good, like expanded playoffs, now expanded video replay. They are going in the wrong direction.

I think in general too many sports have gone out of their way to implement video replay. Sometimes a blown call gets the manager out of the dugout and into the face of the ump, and wakes a few people up.

[kehlis]

Quote: Originally Posted by Kirby_SCEA

I'll be interested to see if and how MLB and its umpires combat managers trying to use replays strategically to throw off opposing players. For example, I could definitely see managers challenging a play that's not really that close just to disrupt the flow of a pitcher who is on a roll against them.

How is it any different than what we have now?

There's already a myriad of ways to try and throw off opponents by stalling whether it be the third base coach calling time and talking to the batter, the pitching coach going to the mound to stall for a reliever or a catcher who can effectively go to the mound as many times as he wants even if he's just talking about the hot chick in the third row.


I don't like it at all, but I don't see it being used a strategical advantage more that other methods that are already in the game are used.

If anything, only having one challenge (the ONLY thing I can agree with this change on) will discourage a manager from using it just to disrupt an opponent.

Quote: Originally Posted by simgamer0005

Video replay doesn't belong in baseball. It interrupts the flow of the game. A lot of the changes to baseball in recent years haven't been good, like expanded playoffs, now expanded video replay. They are going in the wrong direction. I think in general too many sports have gone out of their way to implement video replay. Sometimes a blown call gets the manager out of the dugout and into the face of the ump, and wakes a few people up.

Agree for the most part.

I don't care much about it interrupting the flow of the game much, baseball is already a slow game, this won't change much with the flow.


I just don't like it in baseball at all.

[jmik58]

Quote: Originally Posted by Kirby_SCEA

I'll be interested to see if and how MLB and its umpires combat managers trying to use replays strategically to throw off opposing players. For example, I could definitely see managers challenging a play that's not really that close just to disrupt the flow of a pitcher who is on a roll against them.

Any word from SCEA on how the challenge system may surface in The Show?

[simgamer0005]

Quote: Originally Posted by kehlis

Agree for the most part. I don't care much about it interrupting the flow of the game much, baseball is already a slow game, this won't change much with the flow. I just don't like it in baseball at all.

Yeah it's just very un-baseball. Not that an occasional replay review will really stop the flow of the game, but when you consider how many teams can make the playoffs now, they have watered down the regular season so much, that it's kind of counter-intuitive to implement this. I mean, how many games out of a 162 game season are really decided by a blown call? A handful, maybe? It's not like football where you only have 16 games all season or something. I could see maybe the ability for a manager to challenge a pivotal play in the playoffs or world series or something, but I don't see how it's so needed when you have a regular season where so many teams now make the playoffs.

Also I see a very slippery slope with how "After the 7th inning umpires may initiate challenges given that a team hasn't unsuccessfully challenged previously in the game." I could see this causing problems, if lets say a team challenges something early in the game, unsuccessfully, then after the 7th inning the ump can't initiate a challenge that he wants to, or a situation where a team successfully challenged earlier in the game, but yet the ump just doesn't "feel like" initiating a challenge late in the game. I could see situations like how sometimes random plays get reviewed late in college football games, from the booth that are insignificant, but yet more significant missed calls go unnoticed throughout the game and don't even get reviewed. My concern is that that every single play in a baseball game towards the end of the game will get meticulously analyzed via slow motion replay review on TV broadcasts, and the talk will shift from the game itself to whether or not certain plays will be reviewed. We've seen this in college football and this type of thing doesn't belong in baseball.

Quote:

Any word from SCEA on how the challenge system may surface in The Show?

And another thing that is annoying is when video games try to implement a video replay review system in a game that didn't need it before. To implement video replay in a video game they intentionally make the game make incorrect calls to justify a challenge system. Unlike in real life, and video games have the ability to make the correct call every time.