Neyer: Umpires—Not Commissioner—Holding Up Expansion Of Video Review

Instead of asking the umpires to make any of those judgments, MLB could simply treat every foul ball turned into a fair ball and caught ball turned into a trapped ball like an automatic double. After all, there’s really no good reason for automatic doubles to be automatic doubles. In a just world, if you’ve got a fast runner on first base and there are two outs and a long fly ball bounces over the fence, the fast runner would score every time. But he doesn’t. He’s stuck on third base, which has cost teams uncounted runs over the years.

They could just say that a reversed call in the infield is an automatic single, the runners moving up one base, and a reversed call in the outfield is worth two bases, just like an automatic double.

I’m not saying that’s what I would do. I like ambiguity and arguments, and I want to see the umpires making more judgments rather than fewer, assuming the judgments lead to more justice rather than less. But that does seem like a solution that all the stakeholders might get behind.