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  Follow us as each week as our best writers from around the Bloguin Network take aim at each other and square off on anything and everything baseball from "who was better, Mays or Mantle" to "Should MLB have a salary cap?"
Pick a side and agree or disagree. Take part in the debate by posting a comment giving your own opinion. There are no holds barred and nothing is held back in the "The Great Bloguin Baseball Debate."
Today's Debaters are:
Blythe Brumleve, GuysGirl.com
Michael Klopman, Around the Horn Baseball
Today's Topic is: Should instant replay be widley used in MLB?
Instant replay SHOULD be widely used in MLB
By Blythe Brumleve, GuysGirl.com: Blythe Brumleve is the lead writer and founder of GuysGirl.com, a site that brings sports and gaming into a girl's life. To read all her work visit GuysGirl.com and to see all of the interesting stuff she tweets, follow her on Twitter @GuysGirl.
Memo to Major League Baseball: Instant Replay Is Not the Sign of the Apocalypse
Whether it is a referee in football, a linesman in hockey or an umpire in baseball, all sports have some sort of Judge and Jury. These individuals are in charge of making decisions that affect how the game is played out. The purpose of these "judges and juries" is to get the call right.
Get the call wrong and it could majorly affect who wins or even determine the outcome of the game.
So why has baseball been so slow to adopt tools to help the umpires make the right call?
Over years of debate and other major sports leagues adopting instant replay, baseball finally succumbed the pressure of the fans and media by allowing for instant replay on home run calls only.
When the surprising change was announced, the media and fans were already shouting for more instant replay analysis than just home runs. And why the heck not?
Baseball has been filled with these so called "traditionalists" for years that immediately try to squash any part of the game that present day fans would want to alter slightly.
What the traditionalists have to understand is that no one is calling for a little red baseball challenge flag to thrown on the field or for a ruling to be handed over to a panel of judges holding white cards that say "fair or foul".
Fans merely want baseball to take advantage of the multitude of views we have at home.
Think about it, what would happen if instant replay in baseball was expanded to the following scenarios:
Fair or Foul
Out or Safe
Held on the ball or dropped it
Hit batter?
Would the world suddenly start raining fire balls and apocalypse start? Maybe not, but it certainly would cut down on the petty and meaningless "I'm going to talk slightly louder really close to your face so maybe you change your mind about the horrible call you just made".
"But wouldn't instant replay make the game even longer than what it is?" A lot of the time these arguments last double, even triple the amount of time it would take to look a couple camera angles for 30 seconds. How much work does it take to place league official in a video booth who can quickly overrule an obvious mistake?
It goes without saying that umpires are truly great at what they do. They can spot 98% of plays and call them correctly. With that being said, its not 100% and when you're a fan on the bad side of the call, it hurts. Especially when that call can decide how a game end or series plays out ala Don Denkinger.
Really, who wants another situation like this to happen?
With umpire Phil Cuzzi squatting to get a clear view, Joe Mauer's 11th inning hit is called foul after
hitting Melkey Cabera's glove in fair territory, and as seen in this shot, landing approx. a foot in
fair territory afterwards.
Instead of treating replay as "robot that will eventually take an umpire's jobs in baseball", traditionalists and the media should treat replay as an aid.
If a play occurs that is questionable, the coach should be able to go over to umpire and ask for a review at least once per nine innings and any questionable call in extra innings should automatically be reviewed. This would keep the traditional relationship with the umpire and coach respectable, with the ultimate goal of giving the umpires a chance to utilize the same technology we have at home.
With HD TVs becoming the standard in American households, missed calls will only be magnified and the shouts for expanded replay will become louder.
Most fans can agree that a loss based on play is easier to swallow than a loss based off a bad call. If utilized properly, instant replay in baseball should be implemented ASAP as an aid to the umpires to make sure every call, is the right call. - Blythe Brumleve, GuysGirl.com
Instant replay SHOULD NOT be widely used in MLB
By Michael Klopman, Around the Horn Baseball: Michael, a Penn State Graduate writes for Around the Horn Baseball, XtraPointFootball, is a contributor to the Bleacher Report and works on the sports page at the Huffington Post.
"Traditionalist" Side
 It's just not that simple.
Implementing instant replay in Major League Baseball isn't just "slightly" altering the game by any means. It's a big change and personally, I don't think you can argue for instant replay without a detailed explanation of how it should be implemented.
How long can an umpire take to review the play?
Should there be a time limit?
If instant replay is expanded to fair and foul balls, out or safe, held onto the ball or dropped it and hit batters, what about expanding it to balls and strikes?
Why limit coaches to just one request for a review per nine innings?
Don't you think there are way more controversial calls in a game than just one?
That limit wouldn't have done anything to help the umpires in Game 4 of the 2009 ALCS between the Angels and the Yankees.
A system like that would not only make the game last longer - and yes, it would make the game last longer - but it wouldn't really help the problems you're trying to solve either. I understand that the umpires need to get the call right 100 percent of the time and that is just not happening right now; but since there are so many little things that can be reviewed throughout a baseball game, it doesn't make sense to limit a team to one review per nine innings. There needs to be an elaborate system, and that system would disrupt the flow, rhythm and possibly the momentum of any given baseball game.
If you were to at all consider having a replay system, the best possible solution is clearly something very similar to the challenge system in tennis. In tennis, there is a system called the Hawk-Eye Challenge rules. It allows players a maximum of three unsuccessful challenges in a set and one more if the set goes into a tie-break (This system is used in three of the four Grand Slams. The French Open does not use this due to the clay surface.).
Have you seen this system in action? All a player has to do is challenge it and the Hawk-Eye technology takes care of the rest in a matter of seconds. It's phenomenal. Tennis has the best instant replay system by far.
And you know what tennis doesn't have? Four umpires responsible for every call made on the field (Six in the postseason).
The best possible solution WOULD in fact eliminate the use of umpires. How great and less time consuming would that be? Give each team three challenges per nine innings and let technology figure out the right call in ten seconds. Ten seconds! That is how long it would take. And every call would be correct.
But there's one problem. The argument saying that instant replay will be treated like a, "robot that will eventually take an umpire's jobs in baseball" actually makes sense.
(Side Note: So maybe Bud Selig just doesn't want to put his beloved umpires out of a job in such a bad economy?)
 Now, let's say instant replay does expand in baseball and umpires become useless. What about the minor leagues? What about college baseball? Don't you think instant replay would have to be implemented in those areas as well? It would cost millions and millions of dollars (possibly billions) to insert replay into every level of baseball.
The bottom line is that if you want 100 percent of the calls to be correct, the only way to ensure that is through the instant replay system tennis uses. That would eventually lead to the end of umpires and it would cause more issues in the minors and college baseball.
So if you really want 100 percent of the calls made to be correct, then you're asking for baseball games to be run efficiently by technology. Know that you're asking for the eventual elimination of umpires. I don't see that happening. That's the hard truth. It's just not that simple. - Michael Klopman, Around the Horn Baseball
- For a complete archived list of all our debates please visit "The Great Bloguin Baseball Debate" HOME PAGE.
If you haven't voted in our poll on the site yet please do so. We are trying to get a feel for how our readers are looking at the game of MLB so we can write about things they want to hear. The poll question is, "Do you think that MLB should have a salary cap or something similar?"
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