This seems strange to me, too. Why wouldn’t the union want to increase membership?

People, please. That’s probably exactly what the umpires want and asked for. It is MLB that doesn’t want to pay for the extra ump at each location. So they pipe it to a central technician, and he waits for his cell phone to ring. What the umpires union argued is that the technician doesn’t get to actually overrule the call on the field, and doesn’t get to call the Crew Chief to say a call should be reviewed, which is probably what MLB proposed to begin with. The Crew Chief gets to decide when a call needs a review, and he also needs to be the one deciding, so they have to get him the game feed.

I agree that it would make more sense to make the guy monitoring the feeds a full-blown umpire, and just rotate that job amoung the regular crews, but they probably didn’t have time to negotiate how that would work, so they went with the kludgy band-aid solution.

But since they’re keeping the feed entirely at the ballpark, and not relying on people back at the central office to make the call, they could just use the uncompressed HD feed from the ballpark cameras, which is definitely getting buffered locally.

This compression that you speak of . . . will it be of high enough quality to provide any meaningful video to eyes in this office in NY. Broadcast quality transmission of 720p is expensive and requires specific equipment at each ballpark for each video feed. This is the extra technical gear that I speak of, not the cameras. If one desires to bring in all the camera feeds to a central office. I would surely hope that MLB is using higher quality video to distribute to crew chiefs than they are distributing via MLBAM.

The article you linked from mmlb.com does not explain how mlb has captured game feeds in the past. Do they simply have a DSS setup that records the game, are they bringing the games in via fiber ? Nor does the article divulge the video format in which they are receiving and recording each game.

But maybe the umpire union doesn’t want to get any bigger, I don’t know.

This seems strange to me, too. Why wouldn’t the union want to increase membership? Especially if it meant a five-man rotation, where each umpire, in turn, got his day in the replay booth (or wherever it is set up)? I’m sure a chance to sit in the shade for an August game in Texas or KC must seem appealing. MLB must have really balked at upping union membership, and wanted the replay guys to be separate from umpiring crews.

No, you’re using the cameras they already have to telecast each game. This requires zero expansion of the technical capabilities of any MLB ballpark.

With 11 games on at the same time tonight (ET and CT), you are talking about well more than 100 video feeds, with each needing a record mechanism in the league office.

Even at 720p HD, 100 feeds with moderate compression (H.264 Level 3.2) is less 2Gbps, which is easily purchasable bandwidth and trivial to record on a RAID array. Guess what? They’ve already done this and have been doing it for years.

As far as the process in concerned, all televised MLB games will be monitored and staffed by an expert technician and either an umpire supervisor or a former umpire at Major League Baseball Advanced Media headquarters in New York.

A television monitor and a secure telephone link to MLB.com, placed next to the monitor, have been installed during the past few weeks at every Major League ballpark. The positions vary. Some are located in dugouts and others are near the umpires’ dressing quarters.

Bob Bowman, the chief executive of MLB.com, noted that the Chelsea location has handled video feeds of every game — recording them and capturing them — for a number of years. They’ve also been streamed live on the Internet. Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, said MLB is taking advantage of that technology.

“We’re going to look at all broadcast feeds that are available,” Solomon said. “There will be different camera angles at times and a different number of feeds, but we will use every available feed that we can get.”

Heck, MLB will send me, or you, or anybody 6 simultaneous feeds.

The awkward thing that JMHawkins and I were objecting to is the little stroll over to the dugout or umpire room or whatever that the crew chief will have to take just to look at the screen:

If the crew chief determines that instant replay review is necessary on a particular disputed home run, then he will call the MLB.com technician, who will transmit the most appropriate video footage to the crew chief and the umpire crew on site. The umpire supervisor or former umpire will not have direct communication with any of the umpires on site.

The decision to reverse a call will be at the sole discretion of the crew chief. The standard used by the crew chief when reviewing a play will be whether there is clear and convincing evidence that the umpire’s decision on the field was incorrect and should be reversed.

Once instant replay review is invoked, whether or not the call has been reversed, neither club will be permitted to further argue the decision. A player, manager or coach who continues to argue will be treated in the same manner as one who argues balls and strikes and subject to ejection from the game.

The only difference between what they’re actually doing and what JMHawkins and I have proposed is that the “replay official” (”umpire supervisor or former umpire”) is not a real official, and he’s back in NY. We’re just suggesting they just add a man to each crew, sitting in front of that screen, and let him make the call. They rotate crew chiefs from one night to the next anyway, and they trust one another to make calls on things like checked swings already, so it’s not like you’re subverting authority or something. But maybe the umpire union doesn’t want to get any bigger, I don’t know.

But NOW they want to implement this?

Yes. Sooner the better.

Now that we’ve already had course altering bad calls made by the umpiring staff, MLB thinks it’s a good idea to do reviews on long balls?

Yes. See above.

Why during the same season when mistakes were already made?

To keep mistakes from happening.

Why not at the beginning of the season or next?

Again, to keep mistakes from happening. It stinks when the wrong decision is made on calls where the umpires generally have ZERO clue as to the correct call. This goes beyond being a judgment call into just guessing.

Why wait to have this new system govern a fraction of the games in the 2008 season?

Mistakes = bad

JMB sighting!

Yeah, don’t look now, but I think that’s two in as many weeks.

#18 How is it somehow unfair to players to have home runs counted as home runs? They aren’t moving the fences. They’re not counting doubles as a home run. They will just more accurately determine whether a struck ball is or is not a homer. This could just as easily benefit A-Rod by keeping someone he’s playing against from receiving credit for a home run on a long foul ball.

No, I think you missed my (and other’s) point. There have already been blown calls this year for homeruns called fouls and fouls called homeruns. The course of the season has already been marred by these inaccuracies. Who knows how the season turns out if these calls were made right in the first place.

But NOW they want to implement this? Now that we’ve already had course altering bad calls made by the umpiring staff, MLB thinks it’s a good idea to do reviews on long balls? Why during the same season when mistakes were already made? Why not at the beginning of the season or next? Why wait to have this new system govern a fraction of the games in the 2008 season?