Yesterday, with a unanimous approval by the Major League Baseball owners, a new system of instant replay was created. The new system, which Bud Selig calls “historic”, goes into effect at the start of the 2014 season.
Under the new system, the manager of team can challenge one call per game, and will be rewarded a second if their challenge is confirmed. After a manager uses all his challenges and at the start the seventh inning, umpires are authorized to initiate a review without a challenge, similar to the NFL official review inside two minutes.
A crew in New York will do all replay reviews, so Umpires do not need to leave the playing field as before. MLB also has added two more umpiring crews (8 new umpires). Umpires now will man the replay center as part of their rotation, instead of past umpires or MLB officials.
Important Aspects of the new system:
• Challengeable plays include: calls on the bases, ground-rule doubles, fan interference, fair/foul, trap/catches in outfield, hit by pitch including non calls, if base runner touched or missed a bag, ball-strike counts for record keeping issues, and boundary plays (fielder into stands to catch a ball).
• Disputed homerun calls will continued to be reviewed under the existing rules established by Major League Baseball and will not be a challengeable play.
• According to Tony La Russa, Managers are still allowed to leave the dugout to argue a call, in which umpires are instructed to ask, “Do you want to Challenge?” The manager must make decision right then.
Finally we have replay!! Umps have an impossible job and this should better the game. Plus replays on the scoreboard.
— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) January 16, 2014
Source: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10305223/mlb-owners-ok-expanded-replay-2014
