Why MLB Put Strike Challenges in Players' Hands
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Episode Description
Why are MLB players, not managers, challenging ball-and-strike calls?
Joe Martinez, MLB Vice President of On-Field Strategy, explains how the automated ball-strike system puts the decision on the field while keeping baseball moving.
ABOUT THE PODCAST Sports is a game of numbers. Wharton experts Eric Bradlow, Shane Jensen, Cade Massey, and Adi Wyner team up to tackle the world of sports, from current events to longstanding issues such as: What sports streaks are the most impressive? How do you rank the best players? Can athletes be compared across sports? Moneyball Highlights explains how decision-makers in the game can avoid the common mistakes and embrace the data. Episodes are recorded at the Wharton School.
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Brief Summary
Baseball replay could put challenges in players’ hands, but testing showed the current format was faster and worked better.
Key points
- Putting the decision in players’ hands. The goal is to give players as much control over the game as possible. The speaker says this decision belongs to them.
- A different replay system from the start?. Looking back, the speaker wonders whether players should have challenged calls on the field instead of managers doing it from the dugout.
