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I'm ok with it since the error was so completely clear and the change has only statistical significance.
The winner is not changed. Nobody else is deprived of any meaningful achievement, etc. The net result officially is:
Picture allowed one less hit, appeared for one less plate appearance, and three (?) fewer pitches.
Batter achieved one less hit (which even he acknowledges was a mistake)
Following batter loses one plate appearance.
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Now, what I find interesting is how we perceive the relative importance. If the blown call had been in the first inning but otherwise everything else was identical, how much outrage would there be? One-hitters happen all the time but we only seem to care about that hit when it come in the ninth inning.
I'm not a fan of replay in baseball but I'd be ok with a limited number of manager challenges for use in entirely unambiguous situations (that is, not only can you determine what the correct call should have been but you can say with certainty what the outcome of a correct call would have been; that second part is missing in most situations). Just to allow for the few times of extremely heightened importance to have recourse. I'd also be fine with umpires having discretion to ask for review help in unambiguous situations (though that might not have helped here since Joyce was absolutely certain of his call until he saw the replay).
But I think widespread use of replay would fundamentally change the experience of watching baseball and actually increase the number of incorrect initial calls. The impact of error for a call is frequently asymmetrical. That is, in a given situation Call A instead of B may be more ambiguous than B instead of A, so the pressure would be to call B and let replay settle it, regardless of whether A was more obviously correct.
Example:
Line drive right over the first base bag and it hooks into the outfield corner. Stand up double for the batter but the guy on first is thrown out at home plate.
Except umpire slipped a bit getting in position to make the fair/foul call and was a little bit late getting his eyes on it. He's 90% sure it just barely missed the chalk and was foul. But if he calls foul and is wrong, what do you do? You can't know that the batter wouldn't have tried for a triple, that the man on base would have been thrown out at home. You don't know that the batter wouldn't have slipped rounding first and have ended up with just a single.
So better to call fair, let the play happen and then go to the replay booth because resetting to the correct foul call is easy.
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