Tag: Angel Hernandez

Umpire Angel Hernandez was roasted for another horrible call: A foul ball that was definitely fair

Angel Hernandez missed yet another call.

Let me begin this by saying: This is a missed Angel Hernandez call that I kind of understand when it comes to where he was positioned and where the ball landed.

But because it’s Angel Hernandez and MLB fans love to roast his bad calls, whether they’re at first base or with balls and strikes or other plays (and to be fair, sometimes he has good nights!), his name was trending on Twitter Friday night.

Here’s the situation: The Texas Rangers were up on the Minnesota Twins 6-5, and Byron Buxton hit a ball down the third-base line, which Josh Smith struggled to field, but Hernandez called it a foul ball, which isn’t reviewable.

It hit the chalk, though. Fair ball!

On replay, you can see that he was probably screened by Smith. But still, he got roasted for another missed call:

Umpire Angel Hernandez made a horrendous call on a throw to first during Rays-Pirates

Hernandez alone probably makes a great argument for robot umps.

While baseball has had a bit of a larger microscope on terrible calls from umpires lately, one person might stand tall above the rest.

That man is long-time umpire Angel Hernandez. He’s a person many MLB fans know by name, which obviously isn’t a good thing for an official rules keeper. During the Rays and Pirates’ (+1.5) matchup on Saturday afternoon,  Hernandez’s inexplicable decision-making showed up in the worst possible way once again.

Let’s take it to the bottom of the third inning. Tampa Bay’s Brett Phillips hit a routine grounder up to second. While hustling down the first-base line, Phillips was thrown out with little issue.

But, for some reason, according to Hernandez, he was safe:

Uh, am I missing something? Because that throw and catch beat Phillips to the bag by several feet. Truly: what are we even doing here, Mr. Hernandez?

Fortunately for the Pirates — who challenged the play — an instant replay confirmed that Phillips didn’t make it safely to first, and the call was reversed. Pittsburgh would go on to lose 6-5.

Under normal circumstances, you’d accept the human element and understand that people miss calls sometimes. But this is an extended pattern for Hernandez over the years. He alone might make an excellent argument for a transition to robot umpires.

While the Pirates, fortunately, weren’t hurt by it, MLB fans were astounded by Hernandez’s latest blunder.

MLB evaluates its umpires like Angel Hernandez with an impossibly lenient grading system

It makes no sense.

There’s no denying that Major League umpires have an incredibly difficult job. They’re tasked with calling balls and strikes on pitches with an unprecedented combination of velocity and movement. And with the strike zone graphics on every broadcast, fans immediately see when a call is missed.

It’s why some umpires — like Angel Hernandez — are among the most heavily criticized officials in U.S. sports. But for as bad as Hernandez performs on a near nightly basis, Major League Baseball doesn’t see it that way at all.

Just look at what happened last week with Hernandez’s putting up a horrific night behind the plate, leading to a colorful outburst from Kyle Schwarber. Umpire evaluators on Twitter had Hernandez scoring a putrid 85 to 88 percent on the night. It was bad.

So, what did MLB think of Hernandez that night? According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the league’s internal evaluation had Hernandez scoring a 96.12 percent on the night.

Why such a discrepancy? Well, according to the report, the league evaluates umpires on such a lenient scale that it makes it nearly impossible to hold any umpire accountable for poor performance. The umpiring union negotiated for such a grading system, and it’s exactly why incompetent umpiring remains an issue for baseball fans.

This is the scale, via ESPN:

MLB employs a team of auditors to assist in its review of each game. The auditors set a unique strike zone for each player based on his setup in the batter’s box. The top of the strike zone is his beltline and the bottom the hollow of his back knee, both determined when he’s loading and preparing to swing. The margin of error is implemented off the corners — 2 inches on each side of the plate.

The rationalization for the margin of error, which was collectively bargained between the league and the umpires’ union — the MLB Umpires Association declined comment — was ostensibly due to the limitations of previous tracking technology but also buys umpires leeway in their grading.

And anyone who watches baseball knows that two inches is a significant margin of error when you’re dealing with balls and strikes. With that buffer zone, only the most blatant of missed calls actually get scored as misses internally.

That gives the league inflated averages with no umpire scoring worse than 96 percent for the 2021 season — the average on that scare was 97.4 percent. That’s a grading curve that would make any college student jealous.

While an automated strike zone (Robot Umps) is something that is being tested at various minor-league levels, it wasn’t among the rule changes included in this most recent CBA. And with such a pro-umpire evaluation method, it’s clear that nothing is going to be done to move away from baseball’s worst umps. Which makes no sense because there are great umpires out there. 

It’s a problem that only hurts the game.

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Noah Syndergaard had a classic reaction to Angel Hernandez’s brutal game behind the plate

So good.

MLB umpire Angel Hernandez had a night to forget behind the plate during Sunday’s nationally televised matchup between the Phillies and Brewers. All night, his strike zone was all over the place. He called strikes above the zone, below the zone, outside and 6.5 inches inside. It was that bad.

And as that brutal night boiled over in Kyle Schwarber’s outburst and ejection, Angels pitcher Noah Syndergaard was watching the game from afar like the rest of us. He wasn’t exactly ready to join the chorus of fans calling for Hernandez’s dismissal, though.

Spoken like a true pitcher, Syndergaard hilariously came in with the best back-handed endorsement of Hernandez’s strike zone.

Of course, Hernandez has also been known to call would-be strikes as balls (which would hurt the pitcher). But on Sunday, Hernandez was outrageously favoring pitchers with his missed calls. He called 11 strikes that were true balls.

Pretty bad!

Still, while everyone was melting down about Hernandez’s abysmal performance, fans did appreciate how Syndergaard managed to lighten up the mood.

Es hora de que el umpire Angel Hernández se retire. ¡Urge!

Duele dejar ir a alguien que ha estado décadas con la liga. Pero duele más verlo dirigir un juego.

La temporada pasada de la MLB nos la pasamos sufriendo con las malas cantadas del umpire Angel Hernández. Y no es nada nuevo, el umpire cubano lleva años haciendo errores. Es más, él mismo ha admitido que adivida lo que marca.

Esta temporada todo indica que las cosas no serán diferentes. El fin de semana Kyle Schwarber de los Phillies perdió los estribos cuando Ángel Hernández otra vez tomó una terrible decisión en el plato.

La pregunta es ¿por qué sigue Hernández de umpire?

Claro, es un veterano en el juego, con más de 20 años de experiencia. Pero, el tipo ya tiene 60 años y aunque no creemos que la edad debe de ser una limitante, claramente le está afectando a Hernández.

A veces, la experiencia no es suficiente si juego tras juego se marcan errores. Tanto aficionados como jugadores se quejan constantemente de las cantadas. No podemos decir que va en contra de algún equipo, sus errores son parejos y aplican para todos. Eso solo demuestra que ya viene siendo hora de que se retire.

En serio, MLB, necesitamos que tomes acción en esto. Estamos hartos ya de hacer corajes día tras día con él.

Ni modo, duele dejar ir a alguien que ha estado décadas con la liga. Pero duele más verlo dirigir un juego. Así que por favor, ya retiren a Angel Hernández.

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Stats show that Angel Hernandez truly had a horrific night even before Kyle Schwarber’s outburst

MLB needs to do something about this.

MLB fans saw the real Angel Hernandez on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, and oh man, it wasn’t pretty.

Just a few days after the much-maligned umpire put together a solid performance calling balls and strikes behind the plate in Boston, Hernandez had the home plate assignment for the Brewers-Phillies game in Philadelphia on Sunday. That game alone could serve as a case to remove Hernandez from the MLB umpiring ranks.

It was that abysmal.

By now, you’ve probably seen videos of Kyle Schwarber losing his cool at Hernandez after getting rung up on a clear, would-be walk. Schwarber could be seen telling Hernandez that he was making awful calls all over the place for both teams. And the Phillies outfielder was spot on.

According to Umpire Auditor, Hernandez was the worst-performing umpire of the night, missing calls on 19 (!!!) taken pitches and only calling 85.3 percent correctly.

He called this pitch, which missed the strike zone by 6.47 inches, a strike on Jean Segura.

Umpire Scorecards came in with a slightly better review of Hernandez’s performance, but it was still awful. They had him at an overall accuracy of 88 percent with 16 missed calls on taken pitches. But his inability to identify strikes was alarming. He called 11 true balls for strikes — a 77 percent accuracy rate.

While it’s an incredibly difficult job to call balls and strikes for MLB pitching, Hernandez is among the worst in the sport. A one-off respectable performance isn’t enough to wipe away years of incompetence. Sunday should have been a wake-up call for MLB and the umpiring union, but they’ve tolerated Hernandez’s embarrassing career for this long. It doesn’t seem like that’s about to change.

Still, MLB fans had seen enough, and they were awfully vocal about it on Sunday.

Kyle Schwarber lost his mind after yet another terrible Angel Hernandez call and MLB fans loved it

Kyle Schwarber went OFF here.

To say Kyle Schwarber wasn’t happy with Angel Hernandez here would be… an understatement, to say the least.

On Sunday, the Philadelphia Phillies were down 1-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers in the bottom of the ninth. With Schwarber up to bat on a 3-2 count, one of the newest members of this year’s Phillies squad was looking to do some damage or get on base to start a rally.

Neither of those things happened because Hernandez made yet another terrible call at the plate. Schwarber took the low — but outside — 3-2 count pitch from Josh Hader and was on his way to first when Hernandez called the strikeout, prompting the outfielder to absolutely lose it on the umpire.

Schwarber got his money’s worth there, from the bat and helmet toss to the incredible heated gesticulating, resulting in an immediate ejection. And you can see why Schwarber had a problem with the call, because it was clearly outside the strike zone.

It’s clear this frustration had been building all game for the Phillies, as Bryce Harper wasn’t happy with a called strikeout he received in the first inning from Hernandez.

The Brewers too were on the receiving end of a brutal Hernandez strikeout of their own in the second inning off of Aaron Nola.

Yeah that’s… not great! Phillies manager Joe Girardi had some words about the situation after the game, stating pretty much what we’re all thinking.

Schwarber too had some choice words.

MLB fans celebrated Schwarber’s reaction after an absolutely bogus call in a big situation.

Angel Hernandez had a solid night as the home plate umpire and MLB fans were genuinely stunned

Anything is possible!

MLB umpire Angel Hernandez has built a reputation as baseball’s worst ump. Whenever teams see him on the schedule to work behind the plate, they know that it’s going to be a long night for pitchers and hitters alike. He can even impact games from first base — there’s no stopping him.

But on Wednesday, something wild happened. Hernandez showed up to work behind the plate for the Blue Jays’ game against the Red Sox. And, well, Hernandez actually put together a competent performance.

According to Umpire Scorecards, Hernandez called 156 of 161 taken pitches correctly on Wednesday night — good for a very solid 97 percent accuracy.

His one egregious missed call didn’t look all that terrible in real time either.

It wasn’t quite the virtually perfect game that MLB umpire Pat Hoberg had in Denver the other night, but for Hernandez, it was a shockingly good job. Needless to say, MLB fans were surprised.

MLB fans crushed notoriously bad umpire Angel Hernandez for being bad at his job once again

Angel Hernandez is still very bad at his job.

The 2022 MLB season is under way and you know things are officially back when baseball fans are rightfully complaining about some awful calls made by umpire Angel Hernandez.

That happened Monday night when the notoriously bad umpire was behind the plate for the Reds-Braves game in Atlanta. Hernandez, who somehow continues to keep his job despite being so bad at it, missed a number of calls last night.

I honestly don’t understand how he’s still allowed behind home plate because look at what he does when he’s behind home plate. These two calls on back-to-back pitches are just incredibly bad:

Those weren’t the only bad calls on his night:

Oh, and he starting dancing for some reason:

Twitter was not impressed.

Angel Hernandez took a wild tumble over the dugout railing to make a call on Gio Urshela’s catch

Talk about dedication from Angel Hernandez!

Why take the stairs into the dugout when you can just roll right over it?

Umpire Angel Hernandez found out the answer the hard way during Sunday’s game between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays. In the top of the sixth, Gio Urshela went running straight into the Rays’ dugout at full speed while attempting to catch a foul ball, bringing about shades of Derek Jeter’s famous dive into the stands.

The play was an incredible display of putting your body on the line in order to make something happen, but unfortunately Urshela went tumbling into benches and was slow to get up. Following right behind him, however, was Hernandez, who flipped over the railing to land in the dugout and made the call on Urshela’s heroic catch.

Talk about a stunning snag from Urshela — who was going really fast when he caught the ball and fell into the dugout, but was ultimately okay — and also absolute props to Hernandez for his eventual landing beside him to make the call for the out.

Both Urshela and Hernandez showed incredible dedication to their respective crafts to give baseball fans a hell of a highlight on the last day of the MLB regular season.

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