Joe Maddon Wants "Nerds" To Look at Baseball Replay Reviews

Joe Maddon is the latest manager to gripe publicly about baseball’s replay system. His beef stems from a call at second base Wednesday night involving Chris Denorfia in the ninth inning. Watch it for yourself. Is he out or safe?

In real time the throw from Scott Van Slyke looks like it beats him to the bag, but if you watch a couple times Denorfia’s hand gets to the base before the tag is applied. The play was close enough and upon review the call on the field stood.

Here’s what Maddon said afterward, via ESPN Chicago:

"“I think it screams for an independent group back there to research the video,” Maddon said after the game. “That’s what I think it screams for as opposed to working umpires that are actually on the field. I think you should get a bunch of nerds back there that know how to look at a videotape and then come to a conclusion. I think it would be much more interesting that way.”"

Yeah, it’s a funny quote. Any time the word “nerd” and baseball are in the mix together it usually creates an amusing headline. As it stands umpires, who may or not qualify as “nerds,” at MLB HQ in New York look at all replay review cases.

What managers are increasingly annoyed about is that the call on the field is taken into consideration when it goes to review. In other words the evidence on replay needs to be clear and overwhelming to overturn the call because, I guess, we know umpires are increasingly sensitive about everything and we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

In this specific case, if you watch the Denorfia slide again a couple times he looks increasingly safe. If not for the out call on the field it’s likely overturned.

This really shouldn’t be that difficult — same with the NFL. We have HD cameras of every game with nearly every angle. Thanks to technology we should be able to get a replay, with some certainty, whether or not a guy is out or safe or a ball was caught or not.

Maybe what it boils down to with baseball and the NFL is do you want to continue to empower the on-field officials or simply get the call right when given the chance to look at it again on video? This shouldn’t be so complicated.

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