Two Things in Baseball Should Be Fixed

Now that we’re deep into the baseball postseason and we Mets fans are enduring a great match up that we frankly all hate in the World Series, I think it’s time to mention two things that MLB needs to work on this off-season.

First of all, the umpiring has never been great, but the fact that only home run calls are reviewable is downright comedic in this day and age, especially in the postseason when every call is important.  If you saw that foul ball call in the Yankees/Twins series, you know what I mean.  Joe Mauer’s hit down the line was fair by a foot, and the umpire was standing 10 feet away, but he called it foul.  A review puts Mauer on second base and the outcome of the game might have been different.  And that’s just one small example I saw…I’ve seen a few more and heard about countless others.  There needs to be a football-like system where a manager is allowed to throw a red flag twice per game.  The umpires need not be insulted by this either—you don’t see football refs complaining about replay, do you?  They want the calls to be right.

Of course, this directly contradicts my second thing that needs to be fixed, but I’ll bring it up anyway.  The length of games is ridiculous, especially in the postseason when there are more pitching changes, weather delays, and more commercials.  I live in the central time zone, and even I can’t stay up for a lot of these games that go on until midnight my time.  I know most of you live on the east coast, and you have to watch games that go on until 1am or later.  My red flag idea would surely make this worse, but what can be fixed are the microscopic strike zones, and pitchers taking all day to deliver a pitch.  Of course, mixing in a few more day games would be nice, too, especially on the weekends.

That’s all I’ve got to say.  I’m curious what you all think.  And hey, try to enjoy the World Series.