Thoughts on expanding instant replay in MLB? Right now it is used to to determine if a home run if fair or foul, if the ball ever left the playing field, and if there was spectator interference.
This year the changes pending are whether or not a player catches a fly ball or not (there have recently been a few instances where the player did not catch the ball, but played it off like they did, fooling the umpire into calling the batter out), as well as reviewing interference calls to include all wall boundaries and not just home runs.
Other areas of debate for instant replays include balls/strikes, safe/out in base running, whether a batter is actually hit by a pitch, and determining fan interference for foul balls, instead of just home runs like it is now.
Balls/Strikes should never be reviewed IMO, and the way an individual umpire calls pitches is part of the game. Calls in base running are part of the game too, although the blown call in Armando Galarraga's near-perfect game may be a good argument for it, it would slow down an already slow sport to the point where I would leave the stadium in debt for the amount of $9 beers I would need to get me through the game. I wouldn't want them to add reviews for fan interference for foul balls because it still won't always be definite whether or not the player would have made the catch, although I'm sure that Steve Bartman wouldn't mind them allowing it. I'm somewhat neutral on allowing replays for hit by pitch, but I think that a player selling being hit when they really weren't is part of the game, much like in football when a player draws a penalty using acting/dramatics.
All in all I think that the addition of more areas of instant replay would be detrimental to the sport. In a game where it is a tradition for players and coaches to argue calls with umpires, and curse at them while kicking dirt at them to the point of being ejected, it would be stupid to take the way a game is called out of the sport. What would the sport be without being able to heckle umpires over blown calls, and old managers getting their only exercise in the month by running up the stairs of the dug-out and over to the umpire to yell nonsense at him 1 inch from his face? Not to mention making a slow placed game even slower, turning the 7th inning stretch into the time to wake up and start watching the game again after passing out after the 3rd inning.