No More Jeff Nelson Play

One of the dullest plays in all of baseball is when a pitcher fakes a pick off attempt at third base in order to try to actually pick off the runner at first. Whenever it happened in a Yankees game Michael Kay uttered "There's the Jeff Nelson play".

Kay has just lost part of his reportoire- Major League Baseball has declared the play a balk beginning in the coming season. The rule was approved in the recent owner's meeting.

My unscientific guess would be the play worked about 1% of the time. It was annoying 100% of the time.

No to Replay

With all of the bad awful horrendous mind blowing wrong calls in this year's post-season, there was no question that expanded use of instant replay would be discussed in the November general managers' meetings. Well apparently not everyone felt that way.

“I know there are some who have talked off line about the expansion of instant replay,” said Jimmie Lee Solomon, executive vice president of baseball operations in the commissioner’s office. “Right now, the commissioner doesn’t see any reason to consider it.”

The commissioner must not have been paying attention this post-season when the supposedly best umpires in baseball got one call wrong after another. And they weren't always simple safe/out calls either.

Phil Cuzzi's foul ball call on Joe Mauer's clear double was a game changer in the Yankees-Twins series. And Tim McLelland made not one, but two bad calls at third base during the Yankees-Angels series. They were clear cut calls that were blatantly wrong. All the umpire conferences in the world aren't going to make those problems go away. Instead you have people questioning the integrity of the game, especially in light of the Tim Donaghy NBA scandal.

All that being said, I don't really like the idea of games constantly being interrupted for replays/reviews. But at least it should be discussed, not summarily dismissed.