The NFL and College Football have been making use of it for years. Major League Baseball had been flirting with the idea of many and finally, this year saw MLB adopt an expanded replay policy. The All Star Break provides us with an opportunity to analyze the success and shortcomings of this program.
Instant Replay in Baseball: by the Numbers
Through July 25, 791 plays have been reviewed. Force plays account for 43.6 percent of these challenges, which is more than any other category of play. Challenged force plays are being overturned at a rate of 54.2 percent, which is notably stronger than the average success rate of all challenges, which sits at about 48 percent.
Another category of play that is frequently overturned is “trap plays,” when a fielder makes a play on a fly ball and it is difficult to determine if the ball was caught before hitting the ground. Of the 13 trap plays that have been reviewed, 12 of them have been overturned. The high rate of reversals makes sense because trap plays are difficult for umpires to judge and easy for a team’s replay official to see.
Nearly one-third of the replay challenges are related to tag plays, which are being overturned at a rate of 49 percent. Aside from force plays and tag plays, No other type of play makes up a significant portion of the total challenges. The next most frequently challenged plays are home runs, which account for less than 8 percent of all video replays.
Umpires are initiating less than 17 percent of all replays. This means more than 83 percent of all replays are requested by managers. The Tampa Bay Rays have initiated a league leading 33 challenges. The Cubs and Blue Jays are not far behind with 32 challenges each. These clubs are the league leaders in replay because they embraced the system so quickly. As demonstrated in the chart below, the aforementioned clubs racked up significantly more challenges during the first two months of the season.
The second chart details the success rate of each team at this juncture in the season. The Marlins led baseball in replay success rate, winning 16 of the 20 plays they challenged. There is little correlation between the amount of challenges and the rate of success. Some teams that challenge frequently like the Rays and Blue Jays have abysmal success rates. Conversely, some teams that rarely challenge, like the Reds and Cardinals, hold comparably horrid rates of success.
Umpire/Manager Dynamics
The advent of expanded replay brought with it new rules to regulate managers. As The Toronto Star explains, “Under the new rules, managers are automatically ejected if they argue a call rather than challenge it; likewise if they argue after a play has been reviewed. Balls and strikes are not challengeable — neither are check-swings nor obstruction/interference calls — but arguing balls and strikes already carries an automatic ejection.”
The impact of these new rules is tangible. Ejections before the All-Star Break increased from 97 in 2013 to 125 this season. While the increase is likely a result of the new legislation, we shouldn’t expect this to become the norm. The slight increase is likely just a byproduct of managers making an adjustment to the new policy. Long term, it is very possible that the amount of managerial ejections decreases.
The replay system is designed to discourage the fiery confrontations between managers and umpires that have become commonplace in MLB. If a manager leaves the dugout to talk to the umpire after a replay review, the rules call for an immediate ejection. The threat of getting tossed so abruptly should eventually deter managers from leaving the dugout after replay reviews.
In addition to stronger ejection rules, the nature of replay challenges should also discourage managerial explosions. When a manager feels a wrong call has been made, he can now take action to ensure the correct call is made. In years past, there was no real recourse for a manager who felt slighted. Hence the classic outbursts of managers like Bobby Cox.
Game Length
The dearth of tirades may be replaced with the time-consuming meetings managers are having with umpires. If a team wants to challenge a play, it needs to do so before the next play begins. To buy more time, managers leave the dugout and talk to the umpire while another coach checks-in with the team’s replay official. The stalling strategy makes sense for the challenging team but it is uneventful and makes for uninspiring television.
These tedious meetings, paired with the lengthy replay process, create a real problem for baseball. Fans and pundits have long been complaining that the games have become too long. Adding a protracted replay review process will do little to quell critics.
The time of baseball games has been rising steadily. Since 2010 the average time of games has risen by two to four minutes each season. In the two weeks preceding the All-Star Game this season, games took an average of 3 hours and 7 minutes, about three minutes longer than the 2013 season average. While this is not the largest sample, it does help substantiate the claim that replay is perpetuating a negative trend.
Average Length of Games
The Neighborhood Rule and More
The last thing we want to illustrate is how replay is changing the way some baseball plays are being called. Going into the season, there were questions regarding how replay review would affect the unwritten “neighborhood rule.”
The neighborhood rule applies to double play balls. Umpires often allow the fielder at second to leave the base before receiving the ball or miss the base all together to evade a sliding runner. The neighborhood rule is not an official MLB policy, but umpires have always been willing to forgive fielders on double play balls as long as the fielder is within the neighborhood of second base.
To continue to protect fielders, the MLB determined before this season to not review force plays at second. However, there have been a couple of instances when neighborhood plays were reviewed. The first occurred in an April 2 contest between the Cubs and the Pirates. The umpires had originally awarded the Pirates with a double play. However, the call was overturned after the Cubs challenged. It was determined that the throw forced the fielder to leave of second base, not the impending runner.
Another example of this occurred in a July game between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets. As in the previous example, the field umpires originally ruled that the Braves had turned a double play. After review, the call was overturned because the fielder had left the bag early in an effort to get the ball to first base quickly.
Another interesting play that has arisen this season occurs during slides into bases. Occasionally, when a player slides into a bag he momentarily loses contact with the bag midway through his slide. This is hardly noticeable in real time and was rarely, if ever, called in the past. However, video replay makes it easy to slow the play down and see the moments when a player is not touching the base. If the fielder keeps the tag applied through the entire slide, a conundrum is created for umpires. We can see this point illustrated on this tag play.
We have not seen a glut of plays like these yet. However, it not inconceivable to think fielders will make an adjustment and start applying tags longer. If fielders made this adjustment, runners would either need to change the way they slide or risk getting thrown out on a higher percentage of close plays.
It will be interesting to see how plays like these are called the remainder of the season and if we see teams make any adjustments over the remaining few months.