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October 11, 2009

On the Beat

Post-season Weekend Update

by John Perrotto

Phil Cuzzi barely had enough time to mistakenly signal a foul ball when advocates of expanded instant replay started howling for change. Major League Baseball begrudgingly became the last major North American professional sports league to implement the use of television replays to help aid in umpiring calls in August, 2008. Replay reviews are used on boundary calls concerning home runs, and Commissioner Bud Selig had to have his arm twisted almost off to agree to that.

However, many people inside the game believe MLB will be spurred to being using replay to determine other calls after what happened in the 11^th inning of the Yankees' 4-3 win over the Twins in Game Two of the American League Division Series on Friday night. With the score tied 3-3, Twins catcher Joe Mauer led off the inning by hitting a drive down the left-field line that bounced off Melky Cabrera's glove, landed a foot inside the chalk, then bounced into the stands for what should have been a book-rule double. Instead, Cuzzi ruled the ball was foul and Mauer singled later in the at-bat. The bad call ended up making a big difference—the Twins loaded the bases but failed to score, then Mark Teixeira's home run in the bottom of the 11^th gave the Yankees the victory and a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, putting them in position to finish a sweep tonight at the Metrodome. "There's a guy sitting over in the umpire's dressing room right now that feels horrible," umpiring crew chief Tim Tschida said after the game. "Nobody feels it worse than the umpire."

Cuzzi's mistake was the most glaring of a number of calls that have been missed, particularly on the bases, during the first nine games of the postseason. Thus, it seems certain that the idea of expanding instant replay to possibly include fair/foul and safe/out calls will be on the agenda at the general managers' meetings in Chicago next month. Following a loss at Oakland in July on a controversial call at home plate to end the game, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said that MLB should steal a page from the NFL and allow managers to throw one red flag per game to challenge a call. Surprisingly, he has backed off on that idea despite potentially losing a post-season game because of a blown call. "The great thing about baseball in the human elements involved and we always want to keep it that way," Gardenhire said. "We made enough mistakes ourselves and we missed opportunities to win the game. It just goes that way sometimes."

Given time to reassess his challenge flag idea, Gardenhire realizes it would not work without having a coach assigned to the press box level. "I couldn't see the play (from the dugout on Friday) so I would have had to have coaches up in the booth calling into my ear on my headset," Gardenhire said. "Give me a headset and give me a red flag and we can fix this stuff, but I would need to have somebody upstairs calling me and saying to throw the flag and question the call."

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is an admittedly old-school manager after 31 seasons. While La Russa would prefer there be no reviews of plays, he does think MLB should use expanded replay rules in the postseason. "Replay is something that has already happened, so if you're talking significance and you are in the postseason, it's something that should be considered if it were really quick," La Russa said. "You could have replay people there and they could just blow the whistle and say, 'Wait a minute, we're going to change that one.' It seems like the postseason would be the obvious place to do that and make sure you get it right."