On Instant Replay

My opinion of instant replay depends on how the bad call affects the team I'm rooting for. If my team is victimized by poor umpiring I'll support it, but if a bad call goes in their favor I'll tell you that human error is part of the game. After Jean Segura "picked off" Kyle Kendrick in Saturday's game I was not terribly supportive of expanding replay in baseball. However, now that time has passed and emotion is removed from the equation I'm once again reluctantly supportive of expanding replay.

It is important for umpires to get as many calls correct as possible. In the spirit of fair athletic competition you want games to be decided by the relative excellence of the teams on a given day. That said, it's not important for umpires to get every call correct. This is where my reluctance to expanding replay comes in as baseball needs to be weary of measures that will slow the game down. 

The average baseball game lasts about 2 hours and 50 minutes, up from 2 hours and 30 minutes in the 70s. Generally speaking, baseball reaches peak watchability (watchfullness?) when it's played at a brisk pace. Conversely, 3 hour and 30 minute slogs can get rather cumbersome and boring for all parties involved (unless lots and lots of runs are being scored). Major League Baseball needs to take measures to speed up the game and instant replay does not do this. Even so, MLB would be well served to expand replay a tad to weed out the egregiously bad calls. I believe they can do this while keeping a generally constant pace of play by doing two things:

1) Giving each team one challenge per game.
2) Allowing the umpires to review calls in the ninth inning and beyond.

This type of expansion, or some variation thereof, seems like a pretty simply way to take care of what ails the umpires. Bad calls can be reversed and, in theory, time otherwise spent watching managers argue with umpires would be replaced with something that would actually change the call on the field.

I'd like  to see some expansion of replay in 2014, but if baseball never expands it I will not be upset. After all, one of the worst calls in MLB history prevented the Cardinals from winning the World Series. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we can live without replay.