I am sick of replay. Managers should not be able to stall until their replay people give them a thumbs up, thumbs down. If the call on the field is going to be challenged, it should only be in cases where the manager with his naked eye sees it differently. This has become just another delay of the game. There are already too many delays. If the manager doesn't trust his own eyes, screw it, the call should stand.
The only problem is that there would be even more time wasted on replays if they weren't checking video first to see if it's worth challenging.
How do you get there? The manager should have 5 -10 seconds to determine whether to challenge. If they can get electronic video help in that time, good for them, but I don't think they can. They would have to rely more on their eyes. Other than that the rules would be the same -- one challenge per team. How would that slow up things? It would also do away with all these challenges where they are splitting hairs on tag plays.
My reasoning is this: in 2015 there were less than 1200 challenges initiated by managers out of a possible total of about 4800, so less than 25%. I think that % would be higher if not for all the occasions where the manager checks the video and sees that the call was correct.
If managers were utilizing their challenges 75% of the time instead of 25% then obviously the video checks would add to the total length of delays rather than reduce them.
I am not a fan of replay and never have been. That said, if they're going to use replay, I think the managers should be given time to check their video feed.
On a slightly different note, one of the broadcasters, can't remember who, had a good suggestion on the replay call. If the review team can't make a decision within 45 seconds, the ruling on the field stands.
I think the replay system is working pretty well myself. It's not perfect by any means and the delays are a pain, but calls are getting fixed, and baseball games are often long and slow anyway.
I watched the end of the Cards/Brewers game on Friday night. The Brewers walked off with a run scoring single and a very close play at the plate, which the Cards challenged.
Here's the scenario: Batter hits a single to left field. The runner on second scores on a bang-bang play at the plate.
The Brewers start celebrating their walk off win.
Hold on! Not so fast. Stop the celebration. The runner might be out and we're going to challenge. So the Brewers players are all standing around now, waiting to see if they can indeed celebrate or not.
After a couple of minutes, the ruling on the field stands. Proceed with celebration.
Talk about taking away from the moment.
#DownWithReplay