With the score tied, 1-1, in Thursday’s game against the Dodgers, Freddie Freeman led off the Braves’ sixth inning with a single. Then he tried to advance on Clayton Kershaw’s wild pitch to the next batter, Adonis Garcia.
And he made it. Replays showed Freeman was safe.
Problem was, he was called out by second-base umpire Ted Barrett.
“I was safe,” Freeman said. “He said my foot came off the base.”
Video replays appeared to show otherwise, but replay wasn’t used because the Braves had already used their allotted challenge in the first inning. When that first-inning play wasn’t overturned, the Braves didn’t have another challenge to use on the Freeman play.
Unless the umpires decide to discuss and overturn a call before seventh inning, the play stands. Which is what happened Thursday. (After the beginning of the seventh inning, the umpiring crew chief can invoke instant replay on any reviewable call.)
The Freeman out loomed large when Garcia followed with a single and advanced to second on an error by right fielder Trayce Thompson. Kershaw got a groundout and struck out Francoeur to end the inning.
“Trying to be aggressive,” Freeman said of his decision to run. “Just didn’t go our way that time.”
Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez supported Freeman’s decision and liked the aggressiveness, he just wished he’d been able to challenge the call so the umps would’ve reviewed it.
“In retrospect, coming back here and seeing the replay, they said he never came off the bag,” Gonzalez said, referring to the Braves’ video staff. “Teddy Barrett told me that he came off the bag. But that first one, you get a possible triple and our replay people say, it’s close enough to challenge.”
The “first one” that Gonzalez referenced was Daniel Castro’s RBI double in the first inning, when Castro was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple. It was a close play and the Brave challenged, but the call was upheld and replay appeared to show Castro’s hand still an inch from the bag when he was tagged.
“We had to challenge that play in the first inning,” Freeman said. “That was super-close, too, it could have gone either way. Getting a guy on third base with none out is huge against Kershaw. So, it’s not like we wasted a challenge.”
Francoeur said he’d like to see managers get two challenges per game. “That’s why I get frustrated — it doesn’t make sense that there’s only one challenge,” he said. “That’s such a huge call in the game.”
While umpires could confer and change a call at any time, Francoeur knows the odds of that happening are slim to none.
“They’re making their calls, they don’t want to show up the other (umpires) unless it’s completely obvious,” he said. “Especially a play at second base like that. No other umpire is going to say they saw it.”
Gonzalez said he hoped the replay rule would be tweaked in the future to allow more reviews.
“That’s the thing that you wish you could change in replay, and maybe they’ll do it down the line, where instead of having managers’ challenges, every close play just review it,” Gonzalez said. “Because the technology is getting faster and faster, and why go through all that hassle. But yeah, that’s the yin and the yang of challenging early (in a game).”
Each team challenged a call Thursday. It took an unusually long 4 minutes and 35 seconds to review the play when the Dodgers’ challenged an out call at the plate when Jeff Francoeur threw out Kershaw trying to score.
Freeman stands opposed to the idea of reviewing every close play or having unlimited challenges.
“The games would be four hours if that happened,” he said. “There’s a lot of close plays in baseball. Seems like every play is bang-bang. If we were to do that, what’s the point of an umpire? Just put cameras out there and just review everything. No. It’s just one of those things that didn’t go our way.”
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