Better yet, let the additional ump in the booth buzz a different signal to them if he needs to say “wait a minute, I need time to review all the angles.”

Isn’t the official scorer (hit vs. error guy) already in the booth seeing all the footage? And, aren’t many of managers’ challenges based on someone in the clubhouse already seeing the various angles on TV and informing the dugout?

That lasted about two months.

Anyone who really imagines it, really thinks it through, will conclude that at-bats will be WAY more exciting with a pitch-tracker calling balls and strikes. You really have to pitch, and you really have to defend that plate as a batter. It’ll be nuts. And no more will the batter be able to deflect the man-against-man intensity of the at-bat by shooting the hairy eyeball at the umpire on a called third strike- he’ll have to look back at pitcher who stands there being awesome. Think about it. Watching the outcome of an at-bat based on merit. Not pitch-framing, the terrible positions that umpires often take to watch pitches, the general laziness or any of the other silly random distracting theatre unrelated to competition that happens around home plate. Think about it.

This issue, like most, is all visual: The breakthrough we all need is someone posting a video of a game called by a computer for us to get used to. When those videos start proliferating and become commonplace, everyone will demand it. Please can someone start this?

But seriously, end managers yelling at umps, institute replay. You will get more calls correct and the game will actually go quicker. We get it, scream at umps is “tradition,” but it is past its time.

In case you needed a little Jimmy hit: (Probably shouldn’t watch that at work)

So yeah, one or two guys are human rain delays, certainly. It varies a lot though. If you watch BeaverMen games, you’ll see a lot of guys step in, take their stance, and get ready to hack. I can’t think of anyone on that team who dicks around like Skip Schumaker. Same with pitchers. There’s guy’s who take ages about it. You’d think they were composing the Magna Carta up there. However for each of them there’s two or more guys who get a sign, come set, and let her rip. There are unenforced rules about this dicking around. If the umpires actually enforced them, things would speed up (and Skip would confine his dicking around to his girlfriend one presumes). Nothing slows a game down more though than a protracted argument and an umpire huddle followed by more arguments. A booth ump would sort that out pronto.

Look at pitcher
*adjust batting glove*
Look at dugout
*adjust batting glove*
Look at girlfriend
*adjust cup*
Look at scoreboard
*adjust batting glove*
Foul ball
*step out of batters box, adjust batting glove*

Rinse, repeat. Whats’ the damn difference??

Baseball cannot afford any measure that significantly slows down the game…..the #1 critique of non-baseball people is that “the game is too slow”.

Except many of these people tend to be die hard football fans and are complete hypocrites. How can you watch a sport that goes:

Coin toss
*commercial*
Kick off
*commercial*
Run 3 plays (esp if you are the Jets, it’s almost always a 3 and out)
Punt
*commercial*
Other team scores a touchdown
*commercial*
Kick off
*commercial*

And say that baseball is boring! In fact, during one of the playoff games, it went:

2min warning
*commercial*
Run a couple of plays, 1 min left, timeout
*commercial*
Timeout again with 0:13 left
*commercial*
13 sec run off, half time
*commercial*

Think of the last 10 or so egregious errors that have been made on the baseball diamond. Only one I can think of was the fair/foul call in the playoffs between the Yankees and Twins. How many Twins fans would say, no I don’t want the extra 3-4 min to sort out where people should go, keep the [wrong] call in play that could have changed the entire dynamic of the series.

For this reason I think you can’t go to a full-time booth review person who reviews every play and can over rule his on the field counterparts. I think the old college football system shows the problems with this……too often a guy like that just wants to get in the game and is looking a bit too hard. Also, I think that it promotes what is going on with the NFL right now, refs are making the call that can be reviewed rather than the one that can’t be corrected. This takes excitement out of the game.

Unlimited challenges by a manager is not good, because that would be abused. Getting relivers ready (or extra ready) and slowing down the rhythm of relief guys, managers will do anything for a strategic advantage. Only two challenges per game does present it’s problems if you get stuck with a crap ump. A system that could potentially leave a bad call to stand in the part of the game where it’s most important that it gets done right (the end of a game)…that’s no good either.

I propose that managers get unlimited challenges as long as they get it right. Only give the managers 2 incorrect challenges per game. This would place a high standard on getting it right. Managers won’t want to be left without challenges at the end and therefore wouldn’t want to challenge unless it’s really a bad call. Refs continue to make the best possible calls in the field, because nobody wants to be known as the ump who had 10 calls overturned in one game. This still leaves the possibility of managerial mis-use in the late innings….but as everyone has said, every system has it’s flaws.

Not to pick nits, but that’s not how it works in the NFL. If you challenge a blown call and win, you can challenge an infinite amount of times and are not charged a time out. It is only if you challenge twice and fail twice that you not only lose two time outs, but you lose the ability to challenge for the remainder of the game. It is supposed to prevent needless or borderline challenges of calls, but of course, its a burdensome process as you say and it certainly doesn’t translate to the MLB. Even if it did, the hockey/Calcaterra method makes waaaay more sense.

I know what it is you’ll miss, though. Jim Leyland’s work in 2011 with a supporting cast of Ed Rapuano and John Farrell, was legendary. I think of it as the “Gosh! What did I do? Did I miss that call? Oh GOSH! I think I’ll just reverse it and screw over the Tigers because John Farrell yelled at me!” song-and-dance. And what a loss THAT kind of theatre will be, too. Leyland was at his best. His mimicry of Ed Rapuano will live on, next to Mike Morse’s mimic homemrun swing, as some of the best on-field theatre this side of Cowboy Joe West pretending to know what he’s doing.

Right call was made though, including Rapuano sending Jim out for a smoke.