Some of the calls last night were atrocious. Strikes being called a foot and a half outside the zone, that "safe" call at second (Jeter) towards the end...

Brett Lawrie will get suspended after he completely lost his cool because of terrible calls in another game last night:

via assets.sbnation.com

And let me recommend you read that piece, as well.


The fact is, we, as a country, can do better than this. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution there was no such thing as standardization. Everything was bespoke, so nothing was interchangeable or replaceable. This was obviously a problem when you needed a new flange or bolt or something, so as soon as we as humans had the ability to mass produce objects of standardized proportions, we did. The constant hassle of unreliability was considerably lessened.

There is no standardization with umpires, right now, only guesswork, even though there are clearly stated rules. We have guys in baseball getting called out at first when the 1st baseman is two feet off the bag, we have guys getting called safe at 2nd when the SS tags him out by a foot, we have strikes and balls being called all around, inside and outside the strike zone, and we have the ability to fix it.

We have tools like PitchFX, we have instant replay. There's no reason why the people charged with getting things right on the field shouldn't have the same tools at their disposal as a drunk fan at a bar. Baseball is not a fast game, but baseball plays happen incredibly fast, and it's my opinion that years of HD television have proven umpires simply aren't up to the task on their own at an acceptable level.

I'm not saying every pitch should be reviewed, but how about a PitchFX alert that gets sent to the ump when they've called a ball three inches inside the strike zone or a strike four inches outside it? How about another umpire watching the broadcast from inside the stadium who can alert the managers when a call gets blown on the base paths, and give the managers two reviews per game?

I'm just spitballing here, I'm sure there are holes in my suggestions. I'm sick of the players and teams getting screwed over because of an antiquated system we have the ability to fix. What do you think?