If MLB Really Wants Shorter Games, It Needs to Figure Out Instant Replay

Even under the best of circumstances, baseball can cause drowsiness. It's the warm weather, it's the leisurely pace, it's too many Bud Light Limes—or, maybe, it's because instant replay reviews, and the minutes-long pauses in game action they demand, leave you gaping at the JumboTron while your team's outfielders sit on the grass like bored tee-ball right fielders. It could be all of the above, really, but the only factor in baseball-induced sleepiness that isn't at least a little bit fun is the replay part.

Instant replay review, which was expanded by MLB in 2014 to include not just home runs but everything from bang-bang plays at first to hit-by-pitches, is getting unwieldy; there were a total of 771 replay reviews through July 4th, a 23 percent jump from the 622 that occurred by that time last year, according to data compiled by Baseball Savant, an advanced metrics site hosted by MLB.

At that pace, fans can expect to sit through 1,768 total replay reviews this season, 32 percent more than 2015, which saw 1,338, and 39 percent more than 2014's 1,275. Even with shorter reviews—the average length of review is down to one minute and 41 seconds, according to MLB spokesman Michael Teevan—at season's end baseball fans will have spent approximately 50 hours staring idly at a screen while old umps at MLB Central Command stroke their mustaches and contemplate the epistemology of an out.

Not surprisingly, the increase in the total number of replay reviews has been accompanied by a bump in average game length. While pace-of-play initiatives helped reduce the average nine-inning game in 2015 to 2:56:14, a six-minute drop from 2014 according to ESPN game length was back up over three hours on average through May 16th, to 3:00:26; according to MLB, average game length has dropped slightly since then, to 2:59:52. Still, even if that shorter mark holds steady through the end of the season, 2016 will have the second longest games, on average, of the past decade. The only season with longer games was 2014, the year MLB introduced expanded replay review.

A supermajority of reviews this year have examined either tag plays or plays at first—they account for a combined 70 percent of all reviews; home-run reviews, at eight percent, are a distant third. The remaining reviews are spread out over force plays, hit-by-pitch confirmations, home-plate collisions, and assorted other judgment calls.

While the reasons for this season's jump in length of game are multiple—pitching changes, nine-run innings, all those 8-6 Red Sox games—ballooning replay reviews cannot help MLB's pace-of-play efforts, which has been a top priority of Commissioner Robert Manfred's administration.

Quicker baseball games became an official priority for the league when Manfred's predecessor, Bud Selig, created a committee to study the issue in 2014. When Manfred took the helm in January 2015, he promptly implemented a number of measures to speed up games at the big-league level. These are small things, mostly: the batter's box rule, which requires that all batters keep at least one foot in the batter's box during their at-bat; stadium timers that measure inning breaks and pitching changes, limiting them to 2:25 between innings for locally televised games and 2:45 for nationally televised ones. There was also a change to replay challenges that allows managers to challenge plays from the dugout rather than having to step out onto the field.

This is known as "nibbling" when pitchers do it, but it appeared to be working, at least in 2015. In 2016, the league ran into a new problem: enforcement. According to Selig, players just don't seem to care very much about following the rules this year. "We think the single biggest thing we had going for us [last season] was player focus on the topic," he said to ESPN. "And we've feel like we've lost a little focus."

Now that length of game is back up, it has become clear that Manfred has a problem on his hands. In an interview with VICE Sports, Teevan said that MLB will wait until the season is over before making any changes, but hastened to add that "the average length of a replay is the lowest it's ever been."

Manfred has expressed frustration with increasing replay reviews this season. "You can rest assured," he told ESPN, "that we are watching this year, and we will be analyzing during the offseason, both the number of replays and particularly the longer reviews. The four minutes and 50 second reviews don't make me that happy."

Baseball is never going to be a fast-paced, thrill-a-minute entertainment—it's not that kind of sport. But in a game already laden with interludes, pausing in the middle of a half-inning while fans are lulled into a trance state by a towering image of a cleat sliding into and back out of second on the JumboTron does not help things.

Where the reviews do help, Teevan insists, is in getting things right. "Instant replay has allowed us to correct hundreds of calls that were missed on the field," he said. "From a competitive standpoint, that's what our clubs and fans wanted." The challenge is integrating that goal with the broader one of not putting everyone to sleep.

While policy changes will be considered at season's end, Manfred's office has already taken steps where it can to address lagging game pace by informing MLBPA of its concerns; players who are repeat offenders of pace-of-play rules are subject to personal phone calls from the MLB offices. (A representative from MLBPA was contacted but did not offer comment.)

It's likely that more extreme measures—like the dreaded 20-second pitch clock—will be on the table for the 2017 season, particularly after that clock's success in shaving off an average of 16 minutes per game in the Triple-A International League. This rule would automatically award a ball to the batter should the pitcher fail to deliver a pitch within 20 seconds.

Should Manfred and the MLB wish to maintain pace-of-play as a top priority going forward, it's clear that a holistic approach is needed. That said, don't expect changes to replay review anytime soon. "'Meriting analysis' doesn't mean there ought to be a change," Manfred said in reference to the increase in reviews. "Just [that] they merit analysis." It's good that MLB is going to give its replay policy a closer look. There's no indication that they're in any rush, but in baseball that's not all that surprising.

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