May 7, 2014

BP Unfiltered

Baseball Prospectus at Fox Sports: The Statistical Impact of Instant Replay

by Russell A. Carleton

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Yesterday, as part of BP's partnership with Fox Sports, I wrote an article for the Fox Sports MLB page about why I love expanded instant replay. Yes, there's #GoryMath involved. A small excerpt, if you please:

Because of instant replay, value is now being returned to its rightful owner. That means that in the days of yore – back in a curious time in the distant past when a song almost entirely in Korean was No. 1 in the United States -- there were probably similar numbers of blown calls that could have been overturned, but weren’t because we lacked instant replay. Some team probably got screwed out of (or were the undeserving beneficiary of) most of a win just from those bad calls. Seven others probably suffered from the theft of or enjoyed the fortune of an extra half of a win. It’s probably been like that for a while. Instant replay has taken this source of luck out of the game

To find out how expanded instant replay might have been worth a win to some team last year, had it been implemented earlier, check out the full article—and stay tuned for future exclusive weekly columns by BP for Fox.

Russell A. Carleton is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @pizzacutter4
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