Major League Baseball’s replay system has peeved Dusty Baker on various occasions this season, but the Washington Nationals manager never had the frustration boiled like in an 8-1 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards Tuesday night.

The Orioles were the beneficiaries of three replay reviews in the first three innings. Each time the original ruling was in Washington’s favor and each time the original ruling was overturned. The first two times, Trea Turner was initially ruled safe stealing second base before the call was reversed. In the third instance, Adam Jones was originally retired at first base for a third out before the call was overturned to extend the Orioles’ half of the third inning.

At one point, cameras caught Baker mouthing his displeasure with vocabulary unsuitable for family television. His frustration surely derived from having three verdicts not go his way, but Baker explained that the process itself, not the final rulings, annoyed him the most.

“Number one, I just think it takes too long,” Baker said. “It takes too long and they’ve gotta do something to correct the length of time. Maybe after 30 seconds if they’re inconclusive, then come up with whatever the umpire said.”

Baseball’s replay system has a glaring loophole: There is no formal time limit to request a challenge. Without a deadline to worry about, teams nearly always stall until someone in the clubhouse with access to a television relays whether to challenge the play or not to the manager.

Sometimes the decisions are made quickly. Sometimes they’re not. On Tuesday, the Orioles waited over a minute to notify the umpires they were challenging Turner’s second steal attempt, further slowing down a game that was already crawling at a snail’s pace. By the time the umpires had received the verdict from the league’s replay center in New York, Turner was already by the Nationals’ dugout because he knew he was out.

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“Don’t care for it too much,” Turner said. “I don’t think I or we or anybody on this side has really benefit from it, so for that reason I don’t really care for it.”

There has been a total of 1,177 reviews across the majors this season through Tuesday and 50.1 percent of the plays been overturned, according to Major League Baseball. Umpires have initiated 142. Managers have requested the other 1,035. The Nationals have challenged 34 calls this season. The average time for a review is one minute, 40 seconds. There have been 39 challenges against rulings in their favor, according to Baseball Savant. Of the 39, 22 have been overturned.

The Nationals found no luck on their recent nine-game road trip: Opponents went 6 for 6 on challenges, while Washington went 0 for 2. Frustration peaked Tuesday.

“The thing about it, is that it sort of makes a point of why do we need umpires, if you’re going to dispute everything that they say?” Baker said. “I don’t know. I’m kind of new this year to replay, but it’s tough to lose three of them. I don’t think anybody’s ever lost three of them. To me, it doesn’t make the umpires look very good. I just hope they correct this.”


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