This is taken from this morning’s And That Happened recaps. I made it its own post because the recaps tend to get buried by mid-morning.
Day 2 of instant replay and everything that many of us said could go wrong with a challenge-based system went wrong:
(a) A critical call was blown;
(b) the call could not be reviewed because the manager was out of challenges;
(c) the wholly arbitrary rule that umpires can’t initiate reviews before the seventh inning was in effect;
(d) the blown-but-unreviewable call constituted the game’s margin of victory; and
(e) all of that led to extended delays.
As for the facts: the entire description of what went wrong and why can be read here, but the short version is that Giants manager Bruce Bochy was penalized for mounting an unsuccessful challenge on one close-as-could-be play by not being able to challenge and overturn an obviously missed call by the umpires on a run-scoring play in last night’s game against the Diamondbacks. The rule has it that a manager gets one challenge and he can only use a second one if the first one was successful. That arbitrary seventh inning rule prevented the umps from reviewing it themselves.
Of course, why a totally defensible, but ultimately unsuccessful challenge on one play deprives a manager of a challenge on a wholly unrelated play is utterly beyond me. Why umpires — or anyone — can’t initiate review of plays that are clearly botched before the seventh inning is likewise beyond me. Why Bruce Bochy and the Giants have to bear the burden of fixing the umpire’s mistakes — and do so in a manner that requires game show-like calculation and management of scarce, gimmicky resources — is so far beyond me that I’d get jet lag if I had to go visit it. Baseball sold the challenge system on its “uniqueness and charm.” This was certainly unique, but not at all charming.
I’m sure, to the extent there are any official responses to the events of this game, they will reference the fact that, as recently as last season, the same outcome would have occurred here but, unlike last year at least there was a chance for the run-scoring call here to be reviewed (that chance being had Bruce Bochy not burned his challenge). Don’t accept that answer. Baseball had carte blanche and the support of everyone to institute a system that got calls right. They chose, however, to go with a system that, by definition, does not have getting calls right as its sole objective. A system which managers do not care for and which its former head of umpiring said “would lead to unbelievable confusion and would miss the point of instituting replay.”
Well, mission accomplished.
