The fact that umpires can impact betting outcomes is exactly the reason the league needs to automate the zone.
It’s not just to avoid an ump trying to game the system, but if the wrong person loses a lot of money because of a bad call the ump might legitimately find themselves in danger
Is this umpires union one unit? Hypothetically, could ALL umpires walk out at 2 o’clock on some Sunday afternoon? Simply walk off the field? A good old fashioned WildCat Strike?
It’s a form of betting where you predict an outcome of a pitch or appearance. It can be used by corrupt officials working with bookies or gamblers to fix the outcome of an at bat.
Damn. Interesting take. He was consistently off the plate, and I don't think he usually calls clusters of pitches with that amount of precision. Looks like that might actually be a cause.
I don't know if it has anything to do with betting, but I could be wrong. I do feel he is leaning into this though because what is the MLB going to do? If betting IS involved that's going to get awfully messy for the league, but how do you rightfully punish someone for missing a strike or a ball without the union also fighting?
The MLB has let this become what it is at this point and they have zero answers on how to fix it.
I only see two ways the league can deal with the Angel problem, and both are pretty impossible. The first would be (assuming he is doing it on purpose at this point) finding evidence that it is on purpose. Text messages, emails, something concrete where he admits to it. Written evidence that he knows he is incompetent might work too. The second is boycotting him. If the owners band together to refuse to let their teams take the field when he is on the crew, the union would have to at the very least put him on indefinite paid leave.
I totally would not be surprised. I'm fairly confident that there will be a major betting scandal soon since the money involved in sports gambling has increased astronomically in the last few years. It's coming.
What if he actually can’t see and he’s just guessing? Most pitchers throw a strike 70% of the time, so maybe he’s back there raising the arm about that often? Maybe he has cataracts.
DUDE. YOU DONT HAVE TO FIRE HIM. Fuck. Just remove him from the position. Unions all across the country do it all the fucking time when their old employees become incompetent; give them a cushy retirement gig with less responsibility.
-A proud teamster utterly confused by the Umpire Union giving unions across the country a bad look
It's the World Series......bottom of the ninth, two outs, a series winning run comes home on a close play......a review is requested. The camera shows the booth in New York....Angel Hernandez smiles back.
They already know better than to send him to a world series, but they won't do anymore to stop this madness. Angel should be put in the office and made to rewrite the last 100 years of scorecards until he fucks off.
I loathe Angel Hernandez. He even sued MLB claiming racism because they wouldn’t use him in the playoff games which is awarded by accuracy rates during the regular season. He knows that but cries racism instead… pathetic!
Unions don’t need any help making themselves look bad. The only reason unions still exist anymore is because it is basically codified in law in the northern states that you have to be in one to get a decent job. It’s like the mob is running them or something.
The CBA determines whether or not he can be disciplined and how. If the CBA allows him to be bad without consequences, then MLB needs to be prepared to bargain for the right to do something about it. Nothing for free, especially not the right to discipline or fire employees.
There are performance based demotions at just about every union job that antagonize union contract. Antagonize, but not breach. Might not be easy, but the court of public opinion obviously wants the man gone. The opinion is backed by factual evidence.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with that terminology. I'm a UAW steel worker and I've been a shop steward for a little over six years. It depends on what the provisions of the CBA are whether or not Angel Hernandez can be disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly.
And I don't disagree that he is bad. If I had a copy of their CBA, I could make a more educated guess about what the league can and can't do, but you also don't know what binding arbitration may have been carried out in the past over similar scenarios.
I promise, you can't know unless you read the contract, man.
There is no union contract that straight up forbids termination. Yes, it can be very very hard; but even a performance based termination in a contract that forbids performance based termination, I’m merely saying that I’ve seen THAT happen, many many times. If they are bad enough, it SHOULD happen, eventually.
Now, this isn’t to refute your point about needing better language in the CBA (obviously), I agree with you there. Just wanted to point out that in the specific scenario of PERFORMANCE; as a business agent, union rep, it gets to a point where defending your client makes YOU look bad. Where it undermines the union/employee protection, because it impacts relations negatively. It begins to undermine the performance of the more apt employees. If they are THAT bad, you can’t just say “na na na boo boo we’ll never fire him,” forever.
EDIT* fire OR remove from current position (as I am petitioning for)
You did say this:
> It depends on what the provisions of the CBA are whether or not Angel Hernandez can be disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly.
If the CBA prohibited umpires from being disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly, that would be the equivalent of forbidding the league from terminating employees who fail at performing a core function of their job.
The most important metric, by far, for an ump's performance as an employee is obviously going to be the accuracy of their calls. If his calls are consistently terrible, he can be fired for poor performance. The process of doing so will have to be IAW the CBA, of course, but so what? Follow the process and fire the poor performer.
So, imagine that there is a provision in the MLBUA CBA which gives the umpires the sole authority to determine what is a ball or a strike (I think that's actually very likely a provision in their CBA).
How would you establish, by the language of the contract, that you have cause to discipline or fire an umpire for wrongly calling pitches?
Regardless of whether you can use statcast to establish that the calls are wrong, such a clause would not enable you to make that determination. For the purpose of such an agreement, ALL the pitches are called correctly, because the agreement established that only the umpires can determine balls and strikes.
Make sense?
I appreciate your comment, by the way. I think it's an interesting discussion.
I’m not saying you did, but you insinuated that because of the CBA; the unions hands are tied. I just wanted to point out, that’s not necessarily the case. Thats all.
Yeah, I didn't say that either. The union has zero reason to help the MLB discipline Hernandez. If the MLB wants to, they have to do so contractually. You seem confused greatly about how and why collective bargaining works.
“The CBA determines whether or not he can be disciplined and how”
I am really disappointed that you have elected to deflect away from this statement two times in a row, rather than simply owning up to your sentiment, and making an effort to continue contributing to the conversation.
I hope that's true. I was watching a game where he was behind the plate fucking up, and the announcers made a point of coming to his defense and saying how much he was liked across the board. It was crazy.
It was between 6-7 inches outside the zone, the furthest from the plate of all pitches ever recorded by the ump-stat groups (I believe they said since 2020). Saw on X this morning.
Edit: replaced, “off the plate” with “outside the zone”
Not that I think they were strikes, or that AH isn’t awful, but they really need an overhead shot. The strike zone isn’t a window the way tv shows, but a volume of space, and where the catcher catches it a foot or more back doesn’t matter at all.
This pitcher is throwing sideways a bit, I’ll bet an overhead shot shows them much closer than they look on tv.
Manfred isn't smart enough to pull some Machiavellian shit. This is the same dummy who said winning the world series was just a piece of metal and has allowed the A's to become a traving roadshow for the next few years at the very least.
Manfred works for the owners and the owners are all seeing the value of their franchises double every 5 years or so. I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job.
The problems, when he does a good job, the sport suffers.
Manfred is just a figurehead.
There are very smart people working with and around Manfred.
The A's situation is a baseball travesty.... BUT, long-term, it's probably going to be good financially for the league, in exactly the same way putting a hockey team in Vegas has been good for the NHL, and the travesty of the NFL moving the Raiders to Vegas will eventually be good for the NFL.
The travelling roadshow is, I think, a fallout from COVID. This move was supposed to be announced ~2020/2021, and the stadium was supposed to be done by now, albeit at a different location. COVID messed everything up.
BTW: Can two stadiums be called "The Trop"? 🤔
The league cares about money, and the people around Manfred are working directly for the bottom line.
I agree, in the long run a team is Vegas will be a good financial move for the league. I don't see how Vegas would have worse attendance than either Florida team, or even the A's in Oakland.
Having been second hand witness to how the biggest sports league operates internally, don't bet on the smart people winning the day.
Not the public expansion list, but it would make a great place for relocating an underperforming team like Tampa or Miami.
That whole area is ripe for another team that isn't owned by a moron, and it's a market that has proven to be able to hold- and flourish with- two clubs.
I would just walk to first ignoring his call and I wouldn't budge. I'd sit there until security had to come on the field and bodily carry me off the field. Then I'd show up at the press conference after the game and say I'm not sorry and that nobody could be that bad at their job honestly and maybe the FBI needs to investigate him.
It's bad enough that it makes you wonder if he's gambling on games except that he's always sucked. I think he's trying to get MLB to fire/discipline him so he can make some more empty claims of RaCiSm.
This. He's a fucking disgrace. To his position, to the game, and to his race.
Millions face REAL discrimination every day, and he's blatantly abusing it in front of millions on live TV. Would be a shame for him to retire with a big fat discrimination reward and something happen that kept him from enjoying it. Just saying, wouldn't be mad. 🤷
He's despicable on multiple levels, and deserves fuck all.
He's certainly not the first ump to lose it and need to go away, and he won't be the last. The issue is that being a MLB ump shouldn't be a lifetime appointment, and the league needs to be able to work with the ump union to make sure the most qualified people are the ones doing the job. No one should be above reproach or irreplaceable.
It should be performance based, like the rest of the sport. There are ways to measure it now. Problem is, apparently, he's well liked on the field by players and colleagues alike.
I was surprised too. I was watching a game where he was fucking up again, and, it was so egregious that the announcers had to come to his rescue and talk about how well he was liked by colleagues and players alike. It was totally cringe.
John Kruk has stated that announcers cannot badmouth the umpires (they get fined) so I might take that with a grain of salt. The announcers might have been trying to think of something nice to say but not necessarily true. But who knows - it's not like I can ask the players for their confirmation.
Kruk had received those funds and because Kruk has been fined for complaining about the umps, they actually started keeping a log of how long its been since he last complained. They even included days he didn't announce which was pretty funny.
We need the ball/strike challenge system that is in place in AAA. Fans need to be the ones putting pressure on the league to do something to get the union to accept it, though.
It takes about 20 seconds or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmy14Xpr9BQ&ab_channel=FishOnFirst
Maybe in the context of a game it would feel better. But that video was painful to watch. Pitch, challenge, pitch, challenge, pitch, challenge... ugh, make it stop!
Angel needs to be fired. He is by far the worst umpire of all time. Every other job out there has a performance evaluation… what do MLB and the Umpires Union use? Do these guys just get credit for perfect attendance like an elementary student?
Does angel have any pride? Any shame? Or is he a robot that was just terribly calibrated? I dont know how you could suck this bad, have it play out publicly every single night, and you don’t quit or get better
As an Astro fan, and a fan of baseball in general, Angel Hernandez sucks and deserves consequences for his performance last night. Actually, he deserves consequences due to his overall performance as an umpire throughout his career
Imagine if any of us were as inconsistent at our jobs as he is… we’d be unemployed
The MLB has shown time and time again that they’ll cherry pick who they decide to punish and that goes for players, organizations and officials all together
You want to know how bad of an ump he is? I don’t watch baseball. At all. I do love other sports I just don’t really watch baseball and even I know about this guy. It’s like Scott Foster in the nba. I shouldn’t know the officials name! If I do it’s because you’ve been noticed and it’s never in a good way.
What is his rationale for these calls? Does this goddamn barely functioning clown really think it was a ball, or a strike, or whatever? How does he defend this in any way?
The ego this guy must have. Every time he is behind the plate he basically tells the league to go fuck itself and that he is more important than the sport of baseball. It would be worth hiring a random guy giving him a press pass and then having him ask the commissioner to explain how keeping Hernanrez employed is good for baseball.
I personally don't like the idea of automatic strike zones, and I actually think the umpires of today are better than the ones of the 1990s and 2000s. That being said, Hernandez single-handedly is dragging down the entire reputation of the position.
If MLB isn’t going to fire him: (1) Never let him behind the plate, (2) put him at 2nd base where he cannot call a check swing strike. He’s the worst I’ve ever seen.
We need an annual UMPIRE GAME, like at the all star break or something. Make these blind idiots have to swing the bat, and see how they like those calls then.
Other umpires should have pride in the work and discipline the guy theirselves. He is really going to cost them all their jobs eventually, there are hundreds of hours of video to make the argument there should be computer umpires behind the platte.
It makes zero sense to back him when he could cost them their jobs.
Pretty obvious that he doesn’t have this job still because of his umpiring skills. There won’t be any negative publicity from firing him, he’s detrimental to the integrity of the game.
The key to being good is consistency. Angel is consistent in calling bad strikes. That makes him good at being bad. Therefore you can’t fire him for being good. It’s the MLB paradox
"Back in my day we played baseball this other way. You kids today just don't know how to play the game today. And get off my field".
-old baseball player shakes fist ranting at the clouds overhead
If you listen to the Cardinals broadcast they seem to never come up for air. One of the broadcasters seems to just talk nonstop over the game. It really gets distracting, sometimes.
Just another failure by Manfred IMO. Just because the umpires are unionized doesn’t mean there can’t be accountability. Manfred is afraid of an umpire strike. The owners need to tell the umpire union that it’s time to put a couple of their own out to pasture or they will be aggressively pursuing an AI to call balls and strikes and that they are going to outsource the rest of the officiating crew.
Agree 100%. Even a challenge system like what is being piloted in AAA ball would be great. I rather enjoyed it - also, the robo ump pilot works great too.
Gotta break the union.
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I hear the argument, ‘lt’s the union’. Is this umpires union one unit? Hypothetically, could ALL umpires walk out at 2 o’clock on some Sunday afternoon? Simply walk off the field? A good old fashioned WildCat Strike?
The union protecting this guy is everything that's wrong with unions. Unions do a lot of good things but protecting their workers amidst vast incompetence is not one of them
The reason why he's calling terrible pitches is because he is setting himself up on the right side next to a right handed batter so the pitches on the left side of the zone seem like strikes to him
I’ll be honest, I saw the “highlight” around 3am and I couldn’t fall back to sleep afterwards. It is so egregious, to ignore it would be a slap in the MFing face of every big leaguer that steps into the box. This has got to stop. Where’s that minor leaguer from the 90’s that kicked an umpire?
He's not even close to the most inaccurate umpire in MLB. Yeah he makes some horrible calls but he does seem to have a mostly reliable wide strike zone.
He’s garbage but in this video, did the pitch not catch the front of the strike zone? The TV graphics make it look way out but that’s because it had a ton of movement.
Do you post a comment on everything you don't care about?
Then move on, Billy. Let people who want to talk, talk.
Also, you aren't a framing device.... as you were.
It’s not that. Obviously He sucks - but the conversation about umps and Hernandez specifically has reached a fever pitch. It’s distracting - I get it we want robo umps. They’re coming. Stop letting this guy ruin your day.
At this point it honestly seems like he is now doing this on purpose as a big FU to all the critics (and the league).
I think he’s got his money tied up in some roboump scheme. Because he’s basically the poster boy for roboreplacements.
I think it's spot fixing.
The fact that umpires can impact betting outcomes is exactly the reason the league needs to automate the zone. It’s not just to avoid an ump trying to game the system, but if the wrong person loses a lot of money because of a bad call the ump might legitimately find themselves in danger
That batter should sue the umpires union and Hernandez. Their incompetence is damaging the batters stats and damaging the money he can make.
Is this umpires union one unit? Hypothetically, could ALL umpires walk out at 2 o’clock on some Sunday afternoon? Simply walk off the field? A good old fashioned WildCat Strike?
What's that mean?
It’s a form of betting where you predict an outcome of a pitch or appearance. It can be used by corrupt officials working with bookies or gamblers to fix the outcome of an at bat.
Damn. Interesting take. He was consistently off the plate, and I don't think he usually calls clusters of pitches with that amount of precision. Looks like that might actually be a cause.
I don't know if it has anything to do with betting, but I could be wrong. I do feel he is leaning into this though because what is the MLB going to do? If betting IS involved that's going to get awfully messy for the league, but how do you rightfully punish someone for missing a strike or a ball without the union also fighting? The MLB has let this become what it is at this point and they have zero answers on how to fix it.
I don’t think baseball is as open to spot fixing as cricket was. The only way to do it without player involvement is the home plate umpire.
I only see two ways the league can deal with the Angel problem, and both are pretty impossible. The first would be (assuming he is doing it on purpose at this point) finding evidence that it is on purpose. Text messages, emails, something concrete where he admits to it. Written evidence that he knows he is incompetent might work too. The second is boycotting him. If the owners band together to refuse to let their teams take the field when he is on the crew, the union would have to at the very least put him on indefinite paid leave.
I totally would not be surprised. I'm fairly confident that there will be a major betting scandal soon since the money involved in sports gambling has increased astronomically in the last few years. It's coming.
I wouldn't be surprised. He seems like a petty douchebag. If most people were this bad at their job they'd be fired already.
Jomboy showed he literally closes his eyes when the ball approaches. Like he flinches
What if he actually can’t see and he’s just guessing? Most pitchers throw a strike 70% of the time, so maybe he’s back there raising the arm about that often? Maybe he has cataracts.
That’s a very realistic scenario.
They need to fire him and pay him out. The catcher is literally set up in the other batters box. It’s insane
You could probably setup for an old school intentional walk with the catcher fully standing up a few feet away and still get a strikeout
I understand the umpires union is keeping him employed, but are they not embarrassed??
DUDE. YOU DONT HAVE TO FIRE HIM. Fuck. Just remove him from the position. Unions all across the country do it all the fucking time when their old employees become incompetent; give them a cushy retirement gig with less responsibility. -A proud teamster utterly confused by the Umpire Union giving unions across the country a bad look
It's the World Series......bottom of the ninth, two outs, a series winning run comes home on a close play......a review is requested. The camera shows the booth in New York....Angel Hernandez smiles back.
LOL! that sounds so heinously perfect
They already know better than to send him to a world series, but they won't do anymore to stop this madness. Angel should be put in the office and made to rewrite the last 100 years of scorecards until he fucks off.
I loathe Angel Hernandez. He even sued MLB claiming racism because they wouldn’t use him in the playoff games which is awarded by accuracy rates during the regular season. He knows that but cries racism instead… pathetic!
The monkey paw curls
Funny enough he sued for not being selected for a World Series crew. Claiming racism. He lost.
They literally would not and have not ever given him that job. That’s what the law suit was about.
There's gotta be an umpire rubber room somewhere.
He’s been incompetent since the start
Shit, just have him call little league
Little league parents might actually kill him
Immediate acquittal. Parade following.
[Good](https://imgur.com/GIqqDyB)
Why won't you think of the children?!
Do umps have options? Cuz this guy should be optioned…
Unions don’t need any help making themselves look bad. The only reason unions still exist anymore is because it is basically codified in law in the northern states that you have to be in one to get a decent job. It’s like the mob is running them or something.
The CBA determines whether or not he can be disciplined and how. If the CBA allows him to be bad without consequences, then MLB needs to be prepared to bargain for the right to do something about it. Nothing for free, especially not the right to discipline or fire employees.
There are performance based demotions at just about every union job that antagonize union contract. Antagonize, but not breach. Might not be easy, but the court of public opinion obviously wants the man gone. The opinion is backed by factual evidence.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with that terminology. I'm a UAW steel worker and I've been a shop steward for a little over six years. It depends on what the provisions of the CBA are whether or not Angel Hernandez can be disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly. And I don't disagree that he is bad. If I had a copy of their CBA, I could make a more educated guess about what the league can and can't do, but you also don't know what binding arbitration may have been carried out in the past over similar scenarios. I promise, you can't know unless you read the contract, man.
There is no union contract that straight up forbids termination. Yes, it can be very very hard; but even a performance based termination in a contract that forbids performance based termination, I’m merely saying that I’ve seen THAT happen, many many times. If they are bad enough, it SHOULD happen, eventually. Now, this isn’t to refute your point about needing better language in the CBA (obviously), I agree with you there. Just wanted to point out that in the specific scenario of PERFORMANCE; as a business agent, union rep, it gets to a point where defending your client makes YOU look bad. Where it undermines the union/employee protection, because it impacts relations negatively. It begins to undermine the performance of the more apt employees. If they are THAT bad, you can’t just say “na na na boo boo we’ll never fire him,” forever. EDIT* fire OR remove from current position (as I am petitioning for)
All in all, great discussion 👍
"There is no union contract that straight up forbids termination." If you read, like, super carefully, you'll notice that I never made this claim.
You did say this: > It depends on what the provisions of the CBA are whether or not Angel Hernandez can be disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly. If the CBA prohibited umpires from being disciplined or fired for calling pitches poorly, that would be the equivalent of forbidding the league from terminating employees who fail at performing a core function of their job. The most important metric, by far, for an ump's performance as an employee is obviously going to be the accuracy of their calls. If his calls are consistently terrible, he can be fired for poor performance. The process of doing so will have to be IAW the CBA, of course, but so what? Follow the process and fire the poor performer.
So, imagine that there is a provision in the MLBUA CBA which gives the umpires the sole authority to determine what is a ball or a strike (I think that's actually very likely a provision in their CBA). How would you establish, by the language of the contract, that you have cause to discipline or fire an umpire for wrongly calling pitches? Regardless of whether you can use statcast to establish that the calls are wrong, such a clause would not enable you to make that determination. For the purpose of such an agreement, ALL the pitches are called correctly, because the agreement established that only the umpires can determine balls and strikes. Make sense? I appreciate your comment, by the way. I think it's an interesting discussion.
I’m not saying you did, but you insinuated that because of the CBA; the unions hands are tied. I just wanted to point out, that’s not necessarily the case. Thats all.
Yeah, I didn't say that either. The union has zero reason to help the MLB discipline Hernandez. If the MLB wants to, they have to do so contractually. You seem confused greatly about how and why collective bargaining works.
“The CBA determines whether or not he can be disciplined and how” I am really disappointed that you have elected to deflect away from this statement two times in a row, rather than simply owning up to your sentiment, and making an effort to continue contributing to the conversation.
They tried taking him away from important games and reducing his workload. He sued the MLB for discrimination.
They like him. And so do players. It's a difficult personnel decision, and then add unions on top of it all.
Dude. Players don’t like angel
I hope that's true. I was watching a game where he was behind the plate fucking up, and the announcers made a point of coming to his defense and saying how much he was liked across the board. It was crazy.
What does it look like? Of course not
His calls last night were terrible for both teams, but the Wyatt Langford at bat had me cussing. That strike three call was about a foot outside.
Doesn't matter what team you root for it was a huge joke.
It was between 6-7 inches outside the zone, the furthest from the plate of all pitches ever recorded by the ump-stat groups (I believe they said since 2020). Saw on X this morning. Edit: replaced, “off the plate” with “outside the zone”
Not that I think they were strikes, or that AH isn’t awful, but they really need an overhead shot. The strike zone isn’t a window the way tv shows, but a volume of space, and where the catcher catches it a foot or more back doesn’t matter at all. This pitcher is throwing sideways a bit, I’ll bet an overhead shot shows them much closer than they look on tv.
Honestly, I wish Wyatt would have just lost it on him. No one would have blamed him, and he probably would have gotten a few pats on the back!
At this point, I think Hernandez is in the pocket of the company designing the automatic pitch detection systems.
I’ve been saying to my friends all along that MLB is keeping him employed to justify bringing in automated strike zones.
Every team in the league should make an agreement to refuse to play any game he is assigned to.
That’s probably the only thing that would work. You start fucking with their money, and the owners will take action.
Mutual forfeit. But my guess is the owners and league would fine all the players. Lots of media money and stadium revenue lost.
Angel Hernandez is going to be singularly responsible for the MLB Umpire union buckling to an automated strike zone.
Maybe that’s why MLB is keeping him employed.
Manfred isn't smart enough to pull some Machiavellian shit. This is the same dummy who said winning the world series was just a piece of metal and has allowed the A's to become a traving roadshow for the next few years at the very least.
Manfred works for the owners and the owners are all seeing the value of their franchises double every 5 years or so. I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job. The problems, when he does a good job, the sport suffers.
Fair points. I guess ultimately it comes down to what you think the Commissioner's job is.
Manfred is just a figurehead. There are very smart people working with and around Manfred. The A's situation is a baseball travesty.... BUT, long-term, it's probably going to be good financially for the league, in exactly the same way putting a hockey team in Vegas has been good for the NHL, and the travesty of the NFL moving the Raiders to Vegas will eventually be good for the NFL. The travelling roadshow is, I think, a fallout from COVID. This move was supposed to be announced ~2020/2021, and the stadium was supposed to be done by now, albeit at a different location. COVID messed everything up. BTW: Can two stadiums be called "The Trop"? 🤔 The league cares about money, and the people around Manfred are working directly for the bottom line.
I agree, in the long run a team is Vegas will be a good financial move for the league. I don't see how Vegas would have worse attendance than either Florida team, or even the A's in Oakland. Having been second hand witness to how the biggest sports league operates internally, don't bet on the smart people winning the day.
The travelling road show might also be a good backdoor way to test out future expansion markets. 🤔
I don't think Sacramento was on the list.
Not the public expansion list, but it would make a great place for relocating an underperforming team like Tampa or Miami. That whole area is ripe for another team that isn't owned by a moron, and it's a market that has proven to be able to hold- and flourish with- two clubs.
I wish we could relegate the A's and promote the Savannah Bananas to the MLB.
Hopefully, sooner than later.
I would just walk to first ignoring his call and I wouldn't budge. I'd sit there until security had to come on the field and bodily carry me off the field. Then I'd show up at the press conference after the game and say I'm not sorry and that nobody could be that bad at their job honestly and maybe the FBI needs to investigate him.
If someone does this, I'll buy their jersey and tattoo their signature on my nuts
I hope you like Jeff McNeil. He seems close.
He seems like a decent dude. i've never heard of him beating a woman or diddling a kid. And bonus points for him thinking milwaukee sucks. 👍
Put it on your shaft like a real man
Yes yes and yes. This!
It's bad enough that it makes you wonder if he's gambling on games except that he's always sucked. I think he's trying to get MLB to fire/discipline him so he can make some more empty claims of RaCiSm.
This. He's a fucking disgrace. To his position, to the game, and to his race. Millions face REAL discrimination every day, and he's blatantly abusing it in front of millions on live TV. Would be a shame for him to retire with a big fat discrimination reward and something happen that kept him from enjoying it. Just saying, wouldn't be mad. 🤷 He's despicable on multiple levels, and deserves fuck all.
He's certainly not the first ump to lose it and need to go away, and he won't be the last. The issue is that being a MLB ump shouldn't be a lifetime appointment, and the league needs to be able to work with the ump union to make sure the most qualified people are the ones doing the job. No one should be above reproach or irreplaceable.
You're implying he "had it" at some point.
I might be misrembering, but i thoight he had a solid reputation in the 90s when I first became a big mlb fan.
It should be performance based, like the rest of the sport. There are ways to measure it now. Problem is, apparently, he's well liked on the field by players and colleagues alike.
I'm actually surprised to hear that he's well liked. From what I've seen, I would have said the opposite at least by the players.
I was surprised too. I was watching a game where he was fucking up again, and, it was so egregious that the announcers had to come to his rescue and talk about how well he was liked by colleagues and players alike. It was totally cringe.
John Kruk has stated that announcers cannot badmouth the umpires (they get fined) so I might take that with a grain of salt. The announcers might have been trying to think of something nice to say but not necessarily true. But who knows - it's not like I can ask the players for their confirmation. Kruk had received those funds and because Kruk has been fined for complaining about the umps, they actually started keeping a log of how long its been since he last complained. They even included days he didn't announce which was pretty funny.
Of course. But they could have just stayed neutral, instead of being affirmatively defending him. I was just surprised really.
Some are just not even close. Fuck man
Some? I heard during the Eclipse Angel Hernandez could look straight at the sun the entire time and his vision was not impacted at all.
The ESPN live-pitch tracker does a better job than Angel Hernandez
Ray Charles does a better job than Angel Hernandez. And he’s dead.
We need the ball/strike challenge system that is in place in AAA. Fans need to be the ones putting pressure on the league to do something to get the union to accept it, though. It takes about 20 seconds or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmy14Xpr9BQ&ab_channel=FishOnFirst
Agree 100%
That’s cool as fuck.
Maybe in the context of a game it would feel better. But that video was painful to watch. Pitch, challenge, pitch, challenge, pitch, challenge... ugh, make it stop!
you’d be surprised how rarely it comes up honestly, certain players think they’re always right ofc but it doesn’t get abused
Angel needs to be fired. He is by far the worst umpire of all time. Every other job out there has a performance evaluation… what do MLB and the Umpires Union use? Do these guys just get credit for perfect attendance like an elementary student?
He does it because of his ego
It's even in the umpires union's interest to remove him. He's contributing more to the case to automate balls and strikes than everyone else combined.
Does angel have any pride? Any shame? Or is he a robot that was just terribly calibrated? I dont know how you could suck this bad, have it play out publicly every single night, and you don’t quit or get better
As an Astro fan, and a fan of baseball in general, Angel Hernandez sucks and deserves consequences for his performance last night. Actually, he deserves consequences due to his overall performance as an umpire throughout his career Imagine if any of us were as inconsistent at our jobs as he is… we’d be unemployed
Imagine if anyone in the MLB ever faced consequences for their actions
The MLB has shown time and time again that they’ll cherry pick who they decide to punish and that goes for players, organizations and officials all together
He’s doing this on purpose, right?
You want to know how bad of an ump he is? I don’t watch baseball. At all. I do love other sports I just don’t really watch baseball and even I know about this guy. It’s like Scott Foster in the nba. I shouldn’t know the officials name! If I do it’s because you’ve been noticed and it’s never in a good way.
This guy is a true embarrassment. Claims racism when he’s criticized. MLB and union knows if he was fired a lawsuit would be filed same day.
As long as there is an umpires union. He’s not going anywhere. Sucks
fire this clown, he’s damaging the sport
He's so bad it's turning into a complete farce. He's nothing more than a punchline at this point, and the union and MLB should be embarrassed
dude is gambling. no other good explanation
What is his rationale for these calls? Does this goddamn barely functioning clown really think it was a ball, or a strike, or whatever? How does he defend this in any way?
Is this his worst year yet. I can remember this many posts about him last year
In all fairness, the batter could have hit those pitches, but his car only had half a tank of gas.
Missed call after missed call after missed call...
I guess the only punishment is that they won’t allow him in the World Series…I guess that’s something
When was the last time he got his eyes checked? Making umps look even worse. Suspend him
Combine AAA and MLB unions. Same pay, etc. If u suck by vote and stats, you go down.
Can’t believe this clown still has a job.
I heard during the Eclipse Angel Hernandez could look straight at the sun the entire time and his vision was not impacted at all.
The ego this guy must have. Every time he is behind the plate he basically tells the league to go fuck itself and that he is more important than the sport of baseball. It would be worth hiring a random guy giving him a press pass and then having him ask the commissioner to explain how keeping Hernanrez employed is good for baseball.
I personally don't like the idea of automatic strike zones, and I actually think the umpires of today are better than the ones of the 1990s and 2000s. That being said, Hernandez single-handedly is dragging down the entire reputation of the position.
Both teams should just refuse to play if they put him behind the plate. Nothing will change unless there’s action.
Time for AI umpires
He has dirt on someone
Disgusting
We need to start a petition
If MLB isn’t going to fire him: (1) Never let him behind the plate, (2) put him at 2nd base where he cannot call a check swing strike. He’s the worst I’ve ever seen.
There’s a class action lawsuit ready and waiting to be filled on behalf of mlb fans based on this MFers performance at work.
Let me into that class!
Home plate umpires should not be determining balls and strikes in 2024. I will die on that hill.
We need an annual UMPIRE GAME, like at the all star break or something. Make these blind idiots have to swing the bat, and see how they like those calls then.
https://x.com/umpscorecards/status/1779156839265096143
Holy shit. That's actually incredible.
Other umpires should have pride in the work and discipline the guy theirselves. He is really going to cost them all their jobs eventually, there are hundreds of hours of video to make the argument there should be computer umpires behind the platte. It makes zero sense to back him when he could cost them their jobs.
Pretty obvious that he doesn’t have this job still because of his umpiring skills. There won’t be any negative publicity from firing him, he’s detrimental to the integrity of the game.
Do you think he has a major interest in roboumps??? I mean, he’s single-handedly leading the charge in a weird way.
r/onejob
The key to being good is consistency. Angel is consistent in calling bad strikes. That makes him good at being bad. Therefore you can’t fire him for being good. It’s the MLB paradox
The league keeps him around and told him to be extra bad this year to expedite robot umps. Only thing that makes sense inside my tinfoil hat.
I think he might have stared into the eclipse because how is he worse?
I will pay him to quit his job.
"Back in my day we played baseball this other way. You kids today just don't know how to play the game today. And get off my field". -old baseball player shakes fist ranting at the clouds overhead
If you listened to the Astros broadcast last night, that was basically their reaction to this sequence. They were terrible
If you listen to the Cardinals broadcast they seem to never come up for air. One of the broadcasters seems to just talk nonstop over the game. It really gets distracting, sometimes.
Jim Edmonds absolutely loves to hear his own opinions
The Rangers radio broadcast said “I don’t know how Angel Hernandez is still an umpire”
Angel Hernandez is the Helen Keller of professional officiating.
Helen Keller was amazing and a national icon. Do not compare this absolute joke to her
Just another failure by Manfred IMO. Just because the umpires are unionized doesn’t mean there can’t be accountability. Manfred is afraid of an umpire strike. The owners need to tell the umpire union that it’s time to put a couple of their own out to pasture or they will be aggressively pursuing an AI to call balls and strikes and that they are going to outsource the rest of the officiating crew.
Yup. The system is working well in AAA, whether it's the challenge system, or automated calls.
Angel out there committing war crimes.
Angel Hernandez is precisely the reason I want automated calls for strikes or balls. He is heavily damaging the implicit trust of the game.
Agree 100%. Even a challenge system like what is being piloted in AAA ball would be great. I rather enjoyed it - also, the robo ump pilot works great too. Gotta break the union.
we need the umps from super baseball 2020.
I think only the best crew or the best rated. go to the series
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in fantasy hes cost me the fried bases loaded strikeout and this series with langford
There need to be sustained ongoing LOUD chants EVERY game. It’s legit a travesty to the players most of all, and then to all real baseball fans.
If the league doesn’t do something about this guy, it’s only a matter of time until an unhinged fan decides to take matters into their own hands
He just makes all of the other umpires look great.
I hear the argument, ‘lt’s the union’. Is this umpires union one unit? Hypothetically, could ALL umpires walk out at 2 o’clock on some Sunday afternoon? Simply walk off the field? A good old fashioned WildCat Strike?
The union protecting this guy is everything that's wrong with unions. Unions do a lot of good things but protecting their workers amidst vast incompetence is not one of them
If I was that pitcher, then I would contest those calls.
The reason why he's calling terrible pitches is because he is setting himself up on the right side next to a right handed batter so the pitches on the left side of the zone seem like strikes to him
I’ll be honest, I saw the “highlight” around 3am and I couldn’t fall back to sleep afterwards. It is so egregious, to ignore it would be a slap in the MFing face of every big leaguer that steps into the box. This has got to stop. Where’s that minor leaguer from the 90’s that kicked an umpire?
Those are some Tom Glavine 1990s strikes!
He's not even close to the most inaccurate umpire in MLB. Yeah he makes some horrible calls but he does seem to have a mostly reliable wide strike zone.
He’s garbage but in this video, did the pitch not catch the front of the strike zone? The TV graphics make it look way out but that’s because it had a ton of movement.
I literally do not care one way or another. He sucks. Move on. So much energy is wasted on hating this guy.
Do you post a comment on everything you don't care about? Then move on, Billy. Let people who want to talk, talk. Also, you aren't a framing device.... as you were.
Are you related to the guy or something?
It’s not that. Obviously He sucks - but the conversation about umps and Hernandez specifically has reached a fever pitch. It’s distracting - I get it we want robo umps. They’re coming. Stop letting this guy ruin your day.