Wednesday, March 6, 2013

MLB examining expanded Replay

Major League Baseball intends to expand the use of instant replay for the 2014 season and will be studying over the
 course of this year which calls to review and how to do it


Joe Torre, an MLB executive vice president, said Tuesday that league officials plan to visit Miami during the World Baseball Classic and various spring training sites to examine camera angles and other factors that will help them develop a plan.

''We're going to increase replay next year. We just don't know how we're going to go about it yet,'' Torre said

Commissioner Bud Selig has said he wants to add video reviews for trapped balls and fair-or-foul calls, but league officials also are considering whether it makes sense to review close plays on basepaths - forceouts and tags, for example - and other controversial calls.

Torre said technology could help dictate how widely instant replay is expanded.

During tests last year at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, MLB experimented with the Hawk-Eye animation system that is used to judge line calls in tennis, and the TrackMan radar software used by the PGA Tour for swing and ball flight analysis.

League executives also will be considering ways to implement wider review, such as giving the managers the option of challenging a call. A similar arrangement is used in the NFL, where coaches can throw a red challenge flag and have referees review whatever video is available