Joe Maddon: Wrong about replays, but oh, so right
Joe Maddon got upset last night!
“I cannot believe the conclusion,” Maddon fumed. “That might be the worst non-overturn I’ve seen to this point.”
--snip--
At least one replay angle seemed to show [Chris] Denorfia getting his hand around the tag and to the bag in time. But after a 3-minute, 19-second review, umpires in New York looking at the video determined it was not definitive enough to change the call.
“I wish that whomever made that call could have just been at Wrigley Field and looked at our big screen if they wanted to see something definitive,” Maddon said. “To say there was nothing definitive right there, I cannot disagree with more strongly."
Well, okay. Here's the play and the interminable review. What do you think?
I'll tell you what I think. I think Denorfia probably did touch the base a millisecond before the glove touched his jersey. But that it's hardly conclusive, and certainly not as conclusive as Maddon seems to think.
It's not that Maddon's dissembling. He's biased, and when we're biased we will interpret things, in perfectly good faith, to support our bias. Which is why we don't let even the most of honest of catchers call the balls and strikes. You need someone calling the balls and strikes who doesn't have a dog in the fight, at least not so anybody would know.
Which is why Maddon is exactly right when he says the umpires should be cleared out of Replay Headquarters in New York and “just get a bunch of nerds back there that know how to look at video tape."
The only reason for umpires to be involved is for political reasons. The current system makes the umpires happy because a) they have more union members, and thus more power, and b) they feel as if they're being judged by their own, rather than by some pointy-headed outsiders.
Well, that's nice for them. But perceptions are powerful, and it's now becoming quite clear that, whatever the merits of the case, the managers believe the umpires back in New York have a vested interest in protecting the guys on the field, sometimes at the expense of getting the calls right.
I'm sure this does happen, whether subconsciously or not, though not nearly as often as Maddon probably thinks (witness Wednesday night for just one example). Fair or not, though, perceptions are powerful! It's not good business for managers to publicly question the integrity of the system. So it's time for MLB to either impose a gag order on the managers, or (better yet) replace those umpires in New York with nerds. With a bit of training, they could do a perfectly fine job, since these calls are not complicated affairs.