As expected, baseball owners approved expanded instant replay for the 2014 season at the owners meetings today. The vote was unanimous. It now goes to the players union and the umpires union in January. Each of them will have to ratify it then.
In its current form it still employs a manager challenge system. Which, as we’ve argued ad nauseum, is an idiotic way to do do things if the goal is to actually get calls correct as opposed to (a) relieving umpires of the responsibility to get calls right and placing it on managers; and (b) introducing a needless strategic element into the game.
But there’s a twist! When the challenge system was unveiled back in August, managers were allowed one challenge in the first six innings and two more from the seventh through the end of the game. Now managers will get a maximum of two challenges that can be used at any point in the game. This too could change, however, as the league will negotiate further with the umps and players.
Bud Selig, who was long opposed to replay, issued a nice comment about it all after the vote:
It’s nice to see someone in a position of power change their mind about something as opposed to continuing to spend all of their efforts either telling you they’re right or changing their mind while pretending that they really haven’t. Still: wish he’d change his mind about the challenge system.