This afternoon, the Houston Astros played host to the Kansas City Royals. This was Game 4 of the American League Division Series and the Astros had a 2-1 lead. If the Royals lose, they’re out of the playoffs. Obviously it’s a very important game. Arguably it’s the most important game of the year because it’s going to impact just about every other playoff race.
Cut to the top of the seventh inning. The Astros are leading by a score of 2-1. Mike Moustakas grounds out. Salvador Perez is hit by a pitch and replaced on the bases by lightning fast Terrance Gore. He immediately steals second base. Alex Gordon strikes out. Terrance Gore proceeds to steal third base. The Astros issue a challenge. Now begins the controversy.
Terrance Gore slides feet first. Astros third baseman Luis Valbuena applies the tag late. This is not in dispute. However Gore only has one foot on the bag. As his momentum finishes carrying him towards the base that foot pops up about an inch and only momentarily. Valbuena keeps the tag on. He does not push Gore’s leg off. At least not in my opinion. It’s the momentum that makes Gore’s foot lose contact with the base. Ultimately the call is overturned.
Remember that this is an elimination game that has far reaching impact on the entire playoff landscape. The Astros would come back the next inning and seemingly blow the game open by taking a 6-2 lead. They’d lose that lead as the Royals scored five runs an inning later. But that shouldn’t change how we view the nature of the overturned call.
Was it within the intended spirit of replay? I don’t think it was. I don’t think there is any way for a person to completely control their body as their momentum finishes carrying them to the bag. The body can only bend so much before it’s forced to move in an unintended way. There’s no way of controlling that entirely. It’s not a skill we possess.
We’re also only able to see these momentarily losses of contact because of slow motion. Normally there wouldn’t be any question that Terrance Gore was safe. Watch a bat hitting a ball in super slow motion. The wood often bends and technically you’ll see that the bat hits the ball two or more times. By the letter of the law that is interference and the batter should be out. But it’s impossible to stop the bat from doing this. It’s just physics.
Since there is no way to always and completely stop your momentum from making you lose contact with the base and the fact that it’s usually just for fractions of a second I don’t think a ruling on the field should be allowed to be overturned. It’s not a matter of skill it’s a matter of luck. And I don’t think that’s what replay should be used for nor what it was meant to be used for.
I think all that needs to be done is a simple clarification of the rule. If momentum is deemed to force a runner to lose contact with the base momentarily but it is not a case of over-sliding, then a ruling on the field cannot be challenged. Either don’t allow the challenge at all or invalidate the challenge. That way a team can’t accidentally lose their only challenge.
There is a legitimate question of where to draw the line with regards to momentum and replay. I think these incidents where momentum makes a player pop up a bit and lose contact with the base are different from over sliding a base. In that case, a player maybe slides too late. Maybe he misjudged when to slide. Maybe his timing is off. This is a matter of skill. If the fielder gets the tag on before the runner gets back in contact with the bag then he deserves to be out. It’s a battle of skill. When we’re talking about the momentum pop-up, it’s not skill. That’s the key difference for me.
In my opinion, in this way replay is broken and something has to be done about it. Something should have been done months ago. These types of overturned calls have been happening all year and it was immediately obvious how ludicrous it was. Even if the outcome of this game were the same had the call not been overturned, it’s a travesty that Major League Baseball hasn’t fixed this part of replay by now. And it’ll be a failure if they don’t fix it before next season.
