Hey, Bud! It's Time For Replay Review: NLCS Game 5 Preview, Dodgers vs. Phillies, Wednesday 10/21, 7:07 CT

Human beings just make human being mistakes. We pay them to make their best judgments, and when they make a mistake, we call them "unqualified." Jeez people, these are professional umps. It’s not that umps are making more mistakes than usual… it’s that there are 100 camera angles analyzing their every move.

I suppose an ump with 30+ years experience like Tim McClelland should be second guessed in every call he makes?

Replay is a waste of time. Baseball is already struggling to hold on to even a bleep on a ratings share, so we want to make it even more boring. I happen to like the idea of an ump making a human call in the heat of the moment. It makes the experience seem more real.

The calls didn’t really affect the game’s outcome. But they may have played a part in crushing the Angels’ spirit.

He was standing right behind Posada so he probably couldn’t see Cano was off the bag. If you go to Duk’s “Worst Call of All Time” blog entry and scroll down – you’ll see the video clip picture that shows it best. No need to play the video, just look at the picture – McClelland is starting to lean his head to the right to try and see what’s going on.

He’s a crew chief. He’s been doing this for umpteen years. And he’s done it well. But last night he just had a brain fart, big time. Someone at that level should not be leaning their head to get a better view. He should be moving his whole body. That play was developing right in front of him and it was developing slow enough that he had plenty of time to move a couple feet over.

ANAHEIM — Those lucky Yankees, leading a charmed life and enjoying outrageously good fortune.
The Yankees thought they were playing the Angels in the 2009 ALCS with real ML umpires officiating the games.

Instead, the Chicago Cubs put on the black shirts and gray trousers.

Last October, the Red Sox beat the Angles in four games, swiftly but cruelly destroying the inflated hopes of a well run franchise. It wasn’t all that predictable.

This October, the Yankees have a chance to win the pennant in five games, thanks to the umpires, who have inexplicably turned into the Cubs, right before your disbelieving eyes. And that was unpredictable.

Do not adjust your HD TV sets at home, and do not throw any hard objects at those television screens: These aren’t really the Cubs; they only look like it. They are the umpires, calling strikes balls and fair balls foul and missing pickoffs on the bases and blowing obvious calls and going all Leon Durham ’84 on us in an epic meltdown.

Except that there is no curse in Anaheim today. Only curse words. And there is no billy goat haunting the Angels.

But Tim McClelland is turning into the goat of this bizarre 2009 postseason.

Is McClelland the only ump wearing the Cubs’ hat in this postseason? Well, of course not. Phil Cuzzi got confused (a-la Milton Bradley and the number of outs) as to which side of the white line was fair and foul in Game 2 of the Yankee/Twins ALDS. C.B. Bucknor was apparently replaced with Ryan Theriot for the Sox/Angels series and blew multiple calls in the same game. Even Greg Gibson got in on the act and ruled Lowell had tagged a runner that he hadn’t. And let’s not forget the dynamic duo of HP umpire Jerry Meals and 1B umpire Ron Kulpa blowing a Chase Utley single in two different ways…it was a foul ball, and Helton didn’t come off the bag.

The umpires still have some games left to try and redeem themselves. They’re in dire circumstances as they walk back into Citizens Bank Park and Angel Stadium and for Game 5 on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. The comeback begins with these two steps:

1. Quit impersonating the Cubs.

2. Pay attention. Survive.

It’s all they can do.

Oh, and one more thing: I hate the Yankees.

If someone makes a mistake, you challenge and move on. Everyone says it would slow the game down, but if you have 4 challenges (2 per team and this assumes that home run calls need to be challenged) and you limit it to 3 minutes, or have an umpire upstairs make the call right away, we are talking a max of 12 minutes. When a manager gets thrown out it is easily longer than that. Easily. Why does stupidity have to be a part of the game. The other thing is, umpires are really unnecessary 99% of the time. They facilitate the game. So having them out there just opens up to errors. Use technology, love it and that will be that.

That the umps are right 96-98 percent of the time.

It’s the other 2-4 percent that need fixing.

There is no rational reason to oppose replay. None. Even the “time” argument is stupid. Baseball is already a four-hour committment. Adding replay isn’t going to be the straw that breaks anyone’s back.

Here’s the trade-off. Instead of a useless argument, you have replay. That’s the carrot you give umps in all this. You really lose no more time.

Managers either challenge it, or sit down and shut up. If a manager comes out to argue and is just doing it to waste time, incite the crowd, work off a grudge, whatever, then run his ass.

But I guess that isn’t “real” enough for some people.

Fuck real. I want it right.

2 Challenges innings 1-7
Booth reviews after the 8th

- Fair/Foul
- Home Run
- Safe/Out at any base
- Trap Calls – Where if it is a trap and called out on the field and determined to be fair, it is ruled a base hit or ground rule double. I wont be hung up on this to get replay.
- NO BALLS AND STRIKES
- Hit Batsman
- IF THEY CALLED 4 STRIKES! Some will laugh but I believe this happened twice this year alone.

All of this being said, if a manager argues, he is ejected.

And this will not be reviewed on the field, there will be a 5th umpire in the booth who makes the determination. And evidence must be 100% conclusive to overturn.

Anything could have happened if those calls are made differently. Less pitches thrown, the defence is in a different position due to men on base, pitch selection would be different. I find these calls as well as the blatant missed calls in earlier series to be very problematic. Yes umpires will make mistakes, but these are very obvious calls that have happened in nearly every game. One bad call can have a drastic effect, but a team should be able to overcome it. Two bad calls can cause a lopsided game.

You’ve invented a new time! 7:067 PM. Have they officially added a few minutes per hour to give the umps more time to blow calls? If so, bravo Bud.

when the score is ultimately 10-1.

Just like it’s hard to get too much worked up on the Twins’ behalf when they have the bases loaded/no outs and don’t score.

But the umps aren’t going to spontaneously get better and TV isn’t going to spontaneously get more forgiving.

but give him credit for admitting his mistake last night to the media after the game. Most umps wouldn’t have talked to the media at all, let alone admit blowing a call.

Replay showed clearly that the ball hit the jersey. The non-call directly affected the on field play (and one could argue, the end result) of a one-game playoff.

It was the wrong call then. It’s still the wrong call now. We have the technology to fix this problem without compromising the authority or autonomy of the umpiring crew. Booth review only STRENGTHENS the argument that “the players should decide the game outcome.”

It’s fixable. And there is a LOT of money at stake to get it right. You don’t think the Tigers would have liked to have had at least one home playoff game and the revenue attached? Is it going to take an owner suing MLB over a blown call to force the issue?

Sorry, but for me, this is a no brainer- and I’m the most hardcore “traditionalist” you’ll find when it comes to baseball. So many good ideas have been expressed as to how to “mechanically” handle replay on non-ball/strike calls. For cripes sake, pick a version and just do it Bud. Stop being a doofus.

I blame Bud Selig for 98% of all that’s wrong in baseball.

Yes, he hosts a radio show with fellow umpire Eric Cooper, both from West Des Moines. It’s a great show with calls made to all types from baseball. They even dissect calls made during the post season; it will be interesting to see what Tim says about himself this time.

I know Tim McClelland, it’s easy to bash people you don’t know, but he is one of the good guys. I can’t believe he blew two calls and I bet he can’t either. This tarnishes a fine career in MLB.

But it’s unforgivable to not include a Sager Warning in the box, too.

4-2 Phils in b4

and umpires will tell you — this was in Verducci’s article after he umped a few instructional league games — that when the players screw up — throw to the wrong base, get caught in rundowns, etc… — the umps are likely to screw up.

McClelland was expecting the play to unfold a certain way. When the players did it another way, he got confused. It happens.

The hilarious Ron Luciano told a story in his book. He said he was umping at first when the first baseman fielded the ball and ran for the bag. He missed the bag with the foot he was lunging with, but managed to get back and tag it with his OTHER foot before the runner arrived.

The fancy footwork threw Luciano, and he called the runner safe. The manager came out to argue and Luciano said, “Don’t blame me! Your guy tagged the base with the wrong foot!”

The manager said, “You’re right!” and walked away.

Replay is meant to SAVE situations like that.

All their fans were so arrogant about having the best NL record, and got more so after sweeping STL. I will rub it in @ work tomorrow like they did to me last year!

Hopefully Frank McCourt’s divorce works out like John Moores’ and the Dodgers hold a fire sale like the Padres did!

Works for me.

Good. I think the Phils have the best chance of beating the Yanks. I’ll be happy with the Phillies in the series. I like the Dodgers much less, especially Manny.

—Completely and totally fail in the regular season
—Former GM hooks up with a real…not…attractive intern
—Phillies make World Series (huge rival)
—Yanks make World Series (huge rival)

GREAT SEASON!

Your repeating NL Champs.

Bako must be pretty happy he got cut too.

NFL football has damaged replay’s rep. Just have an official review all plays upstairs in the post-season. Make him an umpire so the union will bless the system that gives them an additional job opening per stadium in the finals. (In the regular season you might need the challenges system and have the umpires go to the booth because there are too many games at the same time.) Have the replay official communicate wirelessly to the umpires on the field the ruling he makes when he deems it necessary to intervene and pass a rule that any further discussion by a manager, coach or player will result in an automatic expulsion.

human eyes in the heat of the moment CANNOT accurately and repeatably detect or is it correcting poor umpire judgment? To me it is the latter rather than the former.

THEREFORE, this is an issue to fix umpire judgment fundamentals (e.g. calling with his eyes not his heart), not simply instituting replays.

Doing replay is fine and sure it would correct this issue. But the over-riding concern I have is poor umpire judgment rather than simply getting a very, very close call correct; the true intention of instant replay. This was NOT the issue here. The Swisher play clearly indicated that by the entire Angel’s stadium verbal displeasure at that replay.

What we DO NOT need is KNEE JERK reactions to get instant replay in place without FIRST KNOWING if there are other systemic issues. The long-winded rant yesterday by someone who I shall not name is fine example of a knee jerk reaction that will, quite likely, not fix the real issue we’re discussing; poor umpire judgment.

An example I give is: You feel a vibration coming from your cars’ wheels while driving. After paying close attention for several days, it’s clearly speed related. You get all 4 tires replaced, problem goes away, great, right? Wrong. What was really wrong was a couple tires needed to be re-balanced. Sure replacing the tires fixed the issue. But the real issue was an imbalanced mount, not defective tires themselves. Here you spent $500 and a couple hours of your time instead of $75 and 30 minutes.

 . . the point that IowaCubs made in defending his argument that hit home the hardest for me was this one:

The ump makes a call, the players and fans accept the call. 99% of the time the ump is right. That’s real baseball.

I have no way to verify the 99% of course, but I think this whole argument can’t simply be about ‘will instant replay help umpires miss fewer calls?’ There’s no real argument there. Of course it will. But that’s not the point for me. ‘Will improve the experience of the game?’ seems more appropriate. It seems like people want to change a game that I’ve loved for a long time, and make it more ‘modern’, more ‘technological’, and, in my opinion, less unique.

Before all the TV cameras and high def and technological wizardry, stuff like this must have happened all the time. ALL the time. We just didn’t know about it, and so we didn’t get up in arms about it on such a large scale. Now, we know about it, and we demand that it be fixed. How ‘21st-century-technology-fixes-everything’ of us. What other parts of this imperfect wonderful game should we fix? Some kind of camera that can show when the runner at second is stealing signs, because that’s not fair. Individual reviews of swings at some point, if you don’t feel either umpire got it right?

I realize those two examples (and others) seem a tad hyperbolic, and I understand that they are. I have no doubt that, taken to that extreme, a majority of people would argue those sorts of changes aren’t good for the game, they would take away from the feelings and the flow and whatever other emotional words you’d like to use. I guess I’m just a emotional guy, and I’m just jumping to that argument a little earlier, is all.

I think as technology moves in, things get…..maybe not worse, but certainly not better on the whole.

Of course, the Cubs haven’t lost a World Series based on one bad call, so maybe I’d sing a different tune then. But honestly, if that was the price to find out if I’m a hypocrite, I’m not sure I’d want to pay it. ;-)

Peace.