New Instant Replay debut
 

Ok Baseball fans...instant replay had its debut yesterday in the Minor Leagues and the teams were encouraged to invoke replay challenges to test the new system....there were 4 plays that were challenged - 3 Safe/Out calls at 1st Base and one "trap" play in shallow left field. Oddly enough, all four calls were upheld. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the winter to be implemented in MLB next Spring.

If teams are "encouraged" to challenge calles, then they will challenge calls that are somewhat obviously correct. It doesn't surprise me that all four were correct.

IMO, the best challenge system--in any sport--would have a "Jeopardy" quality to it: if you're wrong, you get penalized somehow, as in how the NFL takes away a timeout.

MLB should implement the system that the NHL has -- have a command center with a few umpires watching all the game at once. They would develop a list of things that they want to be reviewed if the call is close or should the manager choose to argue the call. This can be done in a matter of seconds, and the ruling relayed to the crew on the field. Thus, we won't have any situations where a bad call happens when a manager is out of challenges.

Here is a link to one of the IR calls:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/mlb/...&vkey=news_mlb
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By happenstance, I channel-surfed my way to the Arizona Fall League game on MLB Network last night, and the game announcers had Joe Torre in the booth with them for an inning or two. Torre said that there will be a number of things tried during the games, perhaps even changing procedures from game to game to see what works and what doesn't.

Yesterday's game's use of IR was pretty much just open-ended to see how things operated. As they progress, they will probably come up with limitations to the system.