MLB commissioner Bud Selig said he has been soliciting outside opinion from managers and general managers the past few weeks and said no one offered a good explanation why the umpiring was so bad in the first rounds of the postseason.
"The more baseball people I talk to, there is a lot of trepidation about it and I think their trepidation is fair," Selig told reporters before Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday. "I've spent a lot of time [on this] over the past month and will spend a lot of time in the ensuing months as well. I don't want to overreact. You can make light of that but when you start to think you're going to have more intrusions -- and even if they're good intrusions -- it's something that you have to be very careful about. Affecting the game on the field is not something I really want to do."
Selig has not been quick to embrace new technology over baseball tradition, in part due to worries about the pace of games.
"Life is changing and I understand that," he said. "I do like the human element and I think the human element for the last 130 years has worked pretty well. There have been controversies but there are controversies in every sport."
Umpiring in baseball has been bad for years, this isn't anything new. Amazingly, things actually seem to be getting worse. The fact that Selig is too stubborn to do anything more about it just reinforces how bad for baseball Selig is.
There are several other types of plays that I think could easily be added to the current replay rules. Plays such as trap plays like the one with Howard last night, whether the ball is in the infield or outfield, and fair/foul calls like the ball Joe Mauer hit in game 2 of the ALDS could also be reviewed quickly and easily.
Also, why not have a group of people in a room somewhere in the stadium watching the game and calling down to the field when they think something should be reviewed like the NFL does in the final two minutes of a half?
I know people don't want to slow down the games anymore than they already are, but what's an extra few minutes if it means the game is being umpired correctly? To me it's worth it. Umpires already are wasting a ton of time meeting together, and even then they usually don't get the call right.
What do you guys think about this?
