FORT MYERS, Fla. – A split squad of Minnesota Twins’ easy 12-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at Hammond Stadium was no ordinary Grapefruit League affair. It was the first-ever major league game, exhibition or otherwise, in which baseball’s new expanded replay protocols were in use. Ever. In the history of anything.
Though Jays’ manager John Gibbons would have loved to have been able to get replay to reverse a few of the eight walks issued by his pitchers (four by J.A. Happ in the first inning alone), the crowd of over six thousand had to wait until the sixth inning to see the new system in action.
With two out in the bottom of the sixth, the Twins’ Chris Rahl hit a ground ball to shortstop. Munenori Kawasaki fielded it, then took a couple of hard steps towards the second-base bag, appearing to have forgotten that there was no longer a runner on first. When he saw no runner coming, he rushed a high throw to first base, pulling Jared Goedert off the bag to haul it in. Goedert came back down on the base, but first-base umpire Fieldin Culbreath said that Goedert didn’t do so before Rahl stepped on first.
Encouraged to challenge plays as often as possible in the six replay games in which the Blue Jays will play this spring, Gibbons went out immediately to have the umpires take a second look at the play, and they did. Brian O’Nora, the fifth member of the afternoon’s umpiring crew, took a few looks at it in a television truck just outside the stadium and determined that there was no indisputable video evidence that suggested the call should be overturned. The challenge was lost, the batter-runner ruled safe at first base.
It took just over two and a half minutes for the ruling to come from the truck, which is about twice as long as Major League Baseball says is the goal for resolving replay disputes. From my perspective, the replay showed that it was extraordinarily close as to whether or not Goedert’s foot came back down on the bag before Rahl got there, and I understand why O’Nora thought it was too close to overturn. With the cameras and angles that are available in Spring Training, there really was no way to know with absolute certainty that Goedert’s foot beat Rahl’s to the bag, and there must be absolute certainty that the call on the field was incorrect in order for it to be overturned.
Another replay challenge came in the bottom of the eighth inning, when Minnesota’s Doug Bernier was ruled to have beaten Jays’ shortstop Kevin Nolan’s throw to first on his ground ball up the middle. Again the ruling on the field was upheld.
It’s great to see Major League Baseball making strides into the 21st (some might say 20th) Century and using technology to try to get some more plays right. Not as many as possible, of course, though hopefully that will come with time. Neither of the plays challenged in Monday’s game were of the egregious variety that we’ve seen so often in the past, and this system should take care of almost all of those.
It will be very interesting, once the games start to count, to see how managers use their challenges, what strategy they’ll involve. For example, if there are two out and nobody on in the second inning of a 0-0 game and the 8-hole hitter is called out at first when he should be safe, is overturning that call worth using a challenge? My gut feeling says yes, that no matter when a badly blown call happens in a game, it’s worth overturning. After all, if the umpires are as good as they’re supposed to be, the chance to challenge might not come around that often.