Major League Baseball owners unanimously approved funding for replay expansion and voted Thursday to move ahead with an extensive video system next season that would allow managers to challenge almost every umpire's call except balls and strikes.
The owners plan to approve the exact rules in January following the completion of negotiations with the unions for umpires and players.
Rob Manfred, MLB's chief operating officer, said present and former umpires likely would make the decisions on contested calls after reviewing video in New York.
A manager will be given a maximum of two challenges per game and a successful challenge would not count against his limit. If a manager is out of challenges, umpires likely would be able to call for a review on their own.
'The clubs are very excited about it,' commissioner Bud Selig said after the owners' quarterly meetings in Orlando.
'My father always said life is a series of adjustments and I've made an adjustment,' Selig said at Thursday's press conference. 'There isn't one play or one instance that changed my mind. It has just happened over time. I know we're doing the right thing.'
The original plan was for each manager to have one challenge in the first six innings of each game with two more available per team from the seventh inning until the end of the game. That was tweaked because now the system calls for two challenges per team, per game with no regulations on when the challenges are used.
The challenges do not apply to plays that were already reviewable -- boundary plays, such as fair/foul calls on home runs or fan interference on home runs. Those will still be handled by the umpires as they were this past season.
Post a Comment