This season in Major League Baseball has seemingly brought a new umpiring controversy every week, with Jim Joyce's blown call in the Armando Galarraga near-perfect game standing out.

As calls to expand instant replay in the game continue, ESPN's "Outside the Lines" conducted a two-week study to get a sense of how often umpires made the right call on close plays -- and how often they were wrong.

Researchers used broadcast footage of all games from June 29 to July 11 -- 184 in total -- and reviewed every call, with the exception of balls and strikes.

The overwhelming majority of the calls (fair or foul, safe or out) were so obvious they did not require any sort of review.

But the "Outside the Lines" analysis found that an average of 1.3 calls per game were close enough to require replay review to determine whether an umpire had made the right call. Of the close plays, 13.9 percent remained too close to call, with 65.7 percent confirmed as correct and 20.4 percent confirmed as incorrect.

"That's high," said U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame pitcher. "They shouldn't be allowed to miss [that many].

"I have seen some calls this year that just -- that curl your hair."

A Major League Baseball representative declined to comment on the study. Requests to interview Frank Robinson, recently named as MLB's senior vice president of major league operations, and commissioner Bud Selig or any other major league official were declined.

In an interview with ESPN Radio in St. Louis last month, Selig said he would "continue to review" the benefits of expanding replay, but also said none of his core advisers had supported the idea. Other sources said they do not believe Selig has any desire to push for expanded replay beyond its current use of determining whether a home run should stand.

The MLB Players Association, which would have to agree to any change in policy, said in an e-mail: "[The] players agreed to its limited use, but it's too premature to know if there's a consensus among the membership to extend its use."

Shortly after Galarraga's near-perfect game, ESPN The Magazine Baseball Confidential found major league players lukewarm -- at best -- on replay. Twenty-two percent of the 100 players surveyed said they favored replays for calls on the bases; 36 percent supported replay on fair/foul calls.

"Outside the Lines" surveyed 40 Hall of Famers about umpires and replay, and like Bunning, most deemed a 20 percent error rate on close calls too high. They were divided over what, if anything, should be done about it.

"More replay. More replay," said former Orioles manager Earl Weaver, famous for his arguments with umpires. "As long as you got human error involved and the umpire is seeing a play one way and you're seeing it the other way, the only way to decide it, the correct way, is through technology."

But Weaver's fellow Hall of Fame manager, Tommy Lasorda, argued passionately the other way.

"I don't believe in that. I believe the game should be played the way it has been," he said. "It's been like that for years, and I think it should stay that way."

Only one of the 40 made a case to expand replay to balls and strikes.

Those who argued against expanded replay said the "human element" of umpiring is just part of baseball, and some worried that replay would slow games.

But retired umpire Don Denkinger, who became a household name to angry St. Louis fans after his famously incorrect call in the ninth inning of Game 6 in the 1985 World Series, said replay can help umpires achieve the only goal that matters: getting the call right.

"Had I got that play right, or they had instant replay and got it corrected, they would remember the '85 World Series, but they wouldn't have remembered my name," he said.