Joe Torre said last week that replay will be tweaked in order to keep managers from meandering out on to the field as their coaches decide whether or not to challenge a call. Based on what Rob Manfred said at the owners meetings yesterday, that doesn’t really seem possible:
“I think the core of replay is going to be similar,” Manfred said. “I think the changes that we’re contemplating are largely technology, cameras, things like that. There are some issues related to exactly how long it takes to get the replay going that we’re looking at.”
So managers’ challenges are still going to be a thing. Which, for reasons we’ve articulated countless times around here, is dumb. Dumb and, to date, never really justified publicly by Major League Baseball. Really, I went back and looked at coverage on this going back a couple of years and I can’t find an instance where Joe Torre or anyone else explained what makes managers’ challenges a good thing. But oh well.