ESPN’s video of Holliday missing the plate.
ESPN has the best clip of Holliday’s slide that I’ve been able to find on the web. It’s has good resolution, it is broadcast in slow motion, but more importantly it shows the whole slide. The best clip is shot down the left field line which lets you really see just how much Holliday shifted his direction of travel when he dove to the right to avoid the tag. While you do not get a clear view of the plate from above, you do see the whole slide from one vantage point which establishes a “master shot“. This allows you to select key reference points from the master shot that appear in other camera angles, such as the frame when the dropped baseball hits the ground by Barrett’s knee, so that you can match the clips from other cameras with the master shot footage to show what was happening at the same instant in time from a different angle. These clips were the two main source clips for the first two frame by frame breakdowns that I posted on my the video proof page. Without this view, I don’t think the case could be made that Holliday missed the plate. But with its clear view of the distance between Holliday’s body and the plate, its clear depiction of Barrett’s heel on the ground sweeping around the plate, and its showing of the path that Holliday’s left hand took after the slide, this clip makes the foundation of the case that Holliday missed the plate.
Something I found particularly puzzling was ESPN analyst Tim Kurkjian saying after the slide clips play,
I don’t think he (Holliday) got to the plate either but its inconclusive.
I guess ESPN with all its cameras, and all its producers, and all its underpaid interns, wasn’t able to cobble enough footage from different angles to make a conclusive replay. Or is that what they would like us to believe?