Major League Baseball Has A Broken Replay System Yet No Fix
Major League Baseball was the last of the major sports in the United States to implement a replay system. The system itself has routinely been called broken.
One of the first examples that comes to mind when it comes to how bad MLB's replay systme is came in May of 2013 when the Oakland Athletics appeared to have hit a game tying home run off the bat of Adam Rosales.
The replays showed that the ball Rosales hit clearly above the yellow line which meant a home run. Angel Hernandez and the men in New York saw otherwise and confirmed the call of a double even though everyone in the stadium knew that it was a home run.
Today came the most recent example of poor replay reviews. Matt Chapman singled in a run and went to second on the throw, which got cut off and thrown to second. Andrelton Simmons made an off-balance attempt at a tag.
He missed Chapman completely on his first attempt and tried again by raising his arm up and only tagged himself with the glove.
By the time he actually made contact with Chapman he was already on second safely. The call on the field was out though.
Can't really fault the call on the field because the baseball did get to second well before Chapman did. Still after New York was able to review the play the call should have gotten overturned.
This wasn't even a difficult call to overturn either. There was clear evidence that Chapman was safe.
Maybe the fix for the replay system is to have the ones who are reviewing the call not know what the original call on the field is. That seems like the best solution at this point because it seems like a call that even made incorrecetly gets confirmed due to not wanting to make the umpire on the field look bad.
It's one of the reason replay needed to get implemented because umpires on the field refused to overrule each other.
Now it's still the same and the ones not making the correct call are in New York. Also one of the most ridiculous things is that once a team challenges a call and the call doesn't go their way then no other challenge gets made.
Which is ridiculous because the A's in the bottom of that inning got a double play after Chris Bassitt threw a pitch that hit the knob of the bat that then went into fair territoy and should have been a double play.
Intead it got ruled a hit by pitch. Since the A's couldn't challenge the call it gave the Minnesota Twins the opportunity for a big inning which is absolutely ridiculous.