“It happened during the first inning of a matinee at Yankee Stadium after a pitch from Carlos Rodon to Tyler Nevin. That’s when home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt turned to the Yankees dugout and warned Boone.
“You got anything else to say, you’re gone,” he said, according to field-level video shown on the YES Network.
Boone nodded, appearing to get the message, but seconds later Wendelstedt turned to the dugout and tossed him.
Boone quickly jumped out of the dugout and pointed at the stands behind the dugout, indicating it was a fan who doing the chirping. More video shown on YES supported that claim, but Wendelstedt didn’t care.”
If Wendelstedt can’t control his emotions and can’t make rational judgments maybe he shouldn’t be an umpire….
That would be hilarious. It escalates until you have full on body double reenactors who study the opposing team's mannerisms. Though it's probably against the rules to wear their uniform. But rulebook doesn't say a dog can't wear the opposing teams uniform!
Nah... Just bribe some workers in the dugout and lure the team manager away for a minute, insert your body double and wreck havocs. Full on "Just for Laughs" setup lol
I’m not really into baseball (I know how the game works) but what does this mean?
Is the fan chirping the batter to bat better, the catcher to call better pitches, or the umpire to be better at their job?
I guess what I’m asking is does “home plate” necessarily mean the umpire, and is “let’s go” necessarily bad?
Fans go to baseball games to see the umps so just rooting him on /s
In this context “home plate” is the home plate umpire and “let’s go” is basically come on, be better.
its all on audio, the ump literally said the words "i dont care" these assholes have SUCH a kush job and get to lay their ego like a giant dick across the whole field and NOTHING can be done about it until they retire or die theyre like the only fucking people who can reverse a decision like that
>If Wendelstedt can’t control his emotions and can’t make rational judgments maybe he shouldn’t be an umpire….
We wouldnt have any umpires if that was the criteria.
I haven’t watched a MLB game in over 10 years and I still know who Angel Hernandez is. I barely even know the rules to the sport, but I can still see how horrible of an umpire he is.
Nothing against them as people, but when we know an umpire's name as well as we know the player's names there is a problem.
The only three umpires who have names that I care about are Jim Joyce, who once made a horrible call but owned up to it immediately, John McSherry, who literally died on the field, and Eric Gregg, because of his personality and the fact that his strike zone was basically "did it hit the hot dog vendor? No? Strike three!".
I can only name a single player lol but to be fair Ella De La Cruz is incredible, and that would be the equivalent of someone only being able to name like Patrick Mahomes or Lionel Messi only but also the head ref.
I know De La Cruz fell off during the second half last year, but those first few months were amazing, and he's off to a good start this year. I see, and hope, that he's got a bright future because he's super exciting to watch.
Doesn't he like legally suck?
He tried to sue claiming racism prevented him from umpiring bigger games and it was actually legally found he just sucked so bad they didn't want him doing it.
He sucks; but he’s not the worst. In the bottom third, for sure, but there are others worse. Like he literally had an average rating in his home plate game on Saturday. The reason he has the notoriety is that a) when he is bad he is really bad and b ) he has a hair trigger temper when it comes to questioning him.
So, I don't follow baseball, but is this actually something that teams have no recourse for? Like, an umpire can interfere in a game without any legitimate cause for doing so, and there's nothing anyone can actually do about it?
From what I understand (as both a non-baseball follower, and Australian), that during a game of baseball at a professional level, the umpire is basically god, and has the power to eject anyone(?) while a game is happening, which includes audience members.
The head umpire is the ultimate arbiter of the rules of the game, and has final say regarding any judgement calls. They also act in some capacity as the representative of MLB during the game.
Umpires have the authority to eject from the game any person on the team (coach, player, manager, etc). This authority kind of extends to team members off the field as well, as demonstrated by the time [a minor league umpire once ejected the stadium organist for playing "3 Blind Mice"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib69pYyce6c).
*Usually* ejections come after warnings, or after some egregious action. In the case of managers it usually happens after a manger comes out to argue a call, and sometimes it's a tactic a manager uses to get his team and the home crowd fired up.
Strictly speaking, [under the MLB definition](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/umpire), umpires do not have the authority to eject fans. However, due to their status as the head official of the game, if they ask stadium officials to remove a fan, the stadium officials will probably not be disinclined to acquiesce to their request.
> However, due to their status as the head official of the game, if they ask stadium officials to remove a fan, the stadium officials will probably not be disinclined to acquiesce to their request.
Also, because the team has no recourse against an umpire's decision, they basically have to agree to their request or risk the umpire heavily slanting calls against their team. It's pretty much blackmail
This is true in many sports. I think the MLBUA just didn't give a shit about their declining quality. Most other orgs will constantly be reviewing their referees.
I definitely get the sense that getting calls right is less important than saving face. Which, ironically, creates situations in which umpires who are clearly in the wrong have to continue to double down until everyone just sort of shrugs their shoulders and moves on.
>which includes audience members.
Some umps do believe this but the MLB stance is that they cannot and should never try this because if you did it for no reason to someone of a protected class the lawsuit would be 7 figures and the mlb as an org would be in immense trouble if a court looked at it.
They've come dangerously close to it a few times and in the last decade have issued internal memos to never do it
The same is true in (association) football. There is basically no recourse for teams who suffer due to bad refereeing, unless you can prove actual corruption
Huge reason why baseball is dying.
It's too based in its own history, where umpires were to keep the sportsmanship of the game, as well as ref. Well, it's not 1910 anymore. "America's game" is football, not baseball. The guys playing are making millions, not hundreds. It needs to modernize and the umps need to be held accountable
Pretty much. The umps are protected by their rather powerful umpire’s union, so those with ego problems are able to get away with all kinds of bullshit on the field. If you’re interested in learning more about terrible, self-serving umpires, look up Joe West and Angel Hernandez to get started.
There’s a fantastic quote from Bill Klem, one of the great baseball umpires of yore:
“The best-umpired game is the game in which the fans cannot recall the umpires who worked it.”
Once upon a time, umps took their charge seriously, and carried themselves with silent aplomb.
Gah, I don't even follow baseball but I know Angel Hernandez. His strike calling is absolutely brutal, one after another balls were well outside the zone and he just kept calling them strikes.
And the MLB does nothing to correct it.
It's a lot of work to push back against a union. Usually you need documentation out the ass and show a continued decline in their work.
Someone like Hernandez could _easily_ be canned if someone had the balls to actually do the work to do so. But, like every organization with a union, people with the power ignore it because it's easier to just bitch about the union.
My suspicion is they're giving the umpire's union enough rope to hang themselves with to push them out and replace them with some sort of computer system to deal with it.
There was an interesting discussion on Pat Mcafee's show with Jeff Passan I watched the other day, I didn't even realize there was an ump's union but it's painful to see how they shield guys like this who are so clearly bad at their jobs.
I think they're going overboard trying to protect themselves against automated AI ump reviews, but by protecting these bad umps are making the best argument why it needs to happen, all against their own best interests.
Lot of em are shit. Angel averages like 88% just 4.4% below average behind the plate which sounds ok at first but then that means he fucks up like ~20-30 pitches a game, and every who plays knows even a single ball or strike dramatically alters team/player strategy. He's also very inconsistent, and his ego is too big for the pitch. Atleast a few of the bad ones have a stable strike zone.
Thing is even the decent ones miss like 10-15 pitches a game. Which again doesn't sound bad but that's like 40,000 missed pitches by all these guys over a season. I've seen some perfect or near perfect umps and they mostly have one thing in common... They are a 25-35 dude who's eyes still fuckin work. Wow who knew having eyes could lead to better calls behind the plate!
>The umps are protected by their rather powerful umpire’s union
I don't buy it. The MLB has beaten Angel Hernandez in court already. If they *really* wanted him gone, he'd be gone. They probably consider it too expensive.
To be fair, though, before the union umpires could and were beaten up on the field. I'm not excusing Joe or Angel, but some NASTY stuff happened to previous ones.
The damage of ejecting the manager is actually limited. Boone can continue to manager the team from his office inside the stadium or let his bench coach do most of the work. MLB managers today have far less decisions to make in a game than they used to. They tend to manage for the long run like developing young players or handling the bullpen so nobody burns out.
The sequence of Boone causally leaning against the railing chewing gum and checking his nails then jumping out of the dugout very animatedly cause he got ejected was hilarious.
The whole “robo umps” thing only concerns balls and strikes. Human umps are still needed for making calls on the field as well as other stuff like ejections.
There's a lot more stuff than just balls and strikes that they argue... whether a player checked his swing, whether a pitcher threw at a batter intentionally, whether a player was tagged out or safe, etc
Checked swings can be determined by robo umps, probably at the same level if not better,
"whether a player was tagged out or safe," generally straight forward and 99/100 times if its close, it is called on the field, then reviewed in the booth. Why call it on the field if you're going to review it in the booth anyways?
also just because there are robo-umps doesn't mean there are 0 human officials to defer to, just not ones on field. Humans can sit with 20 screens in front of them to have a BETTER judgement than someone on the field.
Just do it with VAR and have a light that shows if safe or out based on cameras having multiple angles. Then have 1 dude there just to let managers yell at him so they can still get ejected when they want to
I am a Lakers fan and the 2nd playoff game against the nuggets. There was a run with no fouls at the end of the game. Mostly no fouls at the end, it was great. Then 30 seconds before game end, Bron gets a foul call on him.
The call, Bron literally did not touch Murray. This shit foul call decided the game. Even the announcers said the call should be challenged.
I get it bad calls happen, but there needs to be a mechanism to scrutinize playoff foul calls and especially foul calls at the end of the game.
For all we know this ref straight up legitimately decided a game with no way to counter them.
Even dumber, the Lakers led the entire game. Nuggets didn't lead until the very end.
I normally don't care about calls, but fuck making such a blatantly bad call at the end of a playoff game.
Literally no contact, there has to be consequences for high impact calls like this.
I dont want refs deciding games to be perfectly honest. Why they decided to be good about not calling fouls, then calling the worst call I've seen in memory at the end of the game baffles me.
Even if we have to extend time, I'd rather actual play decide a game and not a ref at the end of the game. Its too easily abusable.
In fact, there should be different rules at the end of the game to reflect the fact people play harder. They didn't need to decide that game, there was no need for it. They ruined a super competitive game and I truthfully believe it was stolen. I dont think I've said any other Laker games were stolen, but fuck these refs.
From what I understand, Japanese Baseball doesn't have this problem. They have a robo ump calling balls and strikes and field umps handling the rest, but I've never heard of egotist umps on the field being even *remotely* as terrible as, say, Angel Hernandez.
Just fire all umpires. Their job is to make sure the game is fair, but 1) they can’t even do that right, and 2) they’re actively tampering with it when they throw out players and managers who get frustrated with them sucking at their jobs.
The broadcast has strike zone technology. We have replay that can call players out or safe with 100% accuracy.
Fire the umpires.
This made me think of an interview that Stephen Merchant gave about bringing The Office over from the UK. He said one of the changes they had to make was to the main character (Michael Scott in the US version). They said that Americans would never accept that someone so spectacularly bad at his job could continue to keep doing that job for years. It happens in the UK but not in the US.
Wtaf, umps?
And everyone involved that an umpire affects still gets to collect their fat check and go home in their nice car to their nice house and live a relatively decent existence. Even guys on the DFA bubble are still making a decent income per game.
Angel Hernandez is about as petty, mean-spirited, pathological, and crooked as humans can be and he still doesn't hold a candle to the average city official, let alone a member of Congress.
Said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m DONE watching baseball and not giving the MLB another fucking dime until they switch to robot umps or fire every one of these assholes.
Check swings, close calls, intentional hit batters can all be verified by a computer. It’s fucking 2024. Eject these fucking assholes. I will continue to enjoy the Stanley Cup playoffs instead.
Use AI to duplicate Manager's voice... use mobile phone and just BLAST it behind the dugout = Every MLB manager gonna be ejected.
MLB needs better UMPs but maybe a system in place where ONE Ump can't throw people out (unless its a player on the field). But someone behind and out of sight this shit needs better failsafes
I don't watch baseball, but I enjoy watching Jomboy baseball breakdowns.
The relationship between professional managers and umpires strikes me as one of the strangest things in modern sports culture. Why in that one sport is it allowed/expected that if the manager doesn't like the ump's call, he gets right up in the ump's face and starts screaming at him? And then the ump screams back at him, and they scream at each other for a while, and eventually the ump ejects the manager, and then the manager keeps screaming as he's walking away. It's this little performative dance they do, and it's absolutely bizarre.
Based on the article, it sounds like Boone was ejected because the umpire was on a power trip, not because of heckling.
Like, he acknowledged the umpire’s warning, and the moment he did, he was ejected. Then the umpire said “I don’t care who said it, you’re gone”. What a baby. They should fire his ass.
Only in Baseball do casual fans know the names of the officials. I can't ever remember even hearing an officials name in Football.
MLB is a fucking joke.
Nah there are a few well known screwups in the NFL. Brad Allen, Bill Leavy, Bill Vinovich to name a few. Some high profile blown calls and manipulated games.
How about a compromise, automate the strike zone completely, give human umps no say whatsoever in calling balls and strikes. In exchange let the umps make all the calls around the diamond that aren’t balls/strikes. Seems fair to me
I am so sick of hearing about umpires on a power trip. Tossing players, managers, and even STADIUM employees for some of the most innocuous things I've ever seen. At this point I think a player could look at an umpire with an angry expression and get a lifetime ban by these obese chuckleheads.
Fire all the umps and replace them with fans chosen by lottery. The fan-umps get free beer between innings, a photo-op with the mascot, and a $20 discount on stadium hot dogs.
One day the Umpires will blow the lid of this charade and realize they have ultimate power and truly use it. It would be great to see one just walk out and start obviously doing bad calls to make one of the teams win. Yeah, they might be fired, but the results of that game will stand because his all powerful position as Lord of the Game means his calls must be accepted.
Doesn't matter if this guy did anything wrong or not, the Lord spake, it is his privilege alone to decide how the game goes, and therefore this man is guilty, and the Lord's decision must be accepted and enforced.
I don’t remember when I started noticing Hunter Wendelstedt, but at a certain point around 20 years ago I just started knowing that when I saw his name in the umpire crew it was going to be a bad time.
“It happened during the first inning of a matinee at Yankee Stadium after a pitch from Carlos Rodon to Tyler Nevin. That’s when home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt turned to the Yankees dugout and warned Boone. “You got anything else to say, you’re gone,” he said, according to field-level video shown on the YES Network. Boone nodded, appearing to get the message, but seconds later Wendelstedt turned to the dugout and tossed him. Boone quickly jumped out of the dugout and pointed at the stands behind the dugout, indicating it was a fan who doing the chirping. More video shown on YES supported that claim, but Wendelstedt didn’t care.” If Wendelstedt can’t control his emotions and can’t make rational judgments maybe he shouldn’t be an umpire….
so now we going to see fans doing more shenanigans behind opposing dugouts?
“My name is [insert opposing team manager], and I think you’re an asshole!” -random fan to home plate ump.
I’m commander Shepard and you’re the worst umpire in the Citadel.
I approve of this message.
(Punches ump in the face)
Although I firmly believe that Shepard would never punch a civilian in the face, it sure does feel good
Ump: "I will destroy you!"
I should go.
"You will not make this call! Jackass!"
“What is the problem, Mr. Sobel?”
Oh that dog just won't hunt!
“My name is Inigo Montoya! You call shitty balls and strikes! Prepare to die!"
Astros implicated in scandal of hiring professional voice actors to imitate opposing team managers and heckle umpires.
That would be hilarious. It escalates until you have full on body double reenactors who study the opposing team's mannerisms. Though it's probably against the rules to wear their uniform. But rulebook doesn't say a dog can't wear the opposing teams uniform!
Nah... Just bribe some workers in the dugout and lure the team manager away for a minute, insert your body double and wreck havocs. Full on "Just for Laughs" setup lol
Auditions for actors to see who can mimic the other team's managers' voices. We can call it something like America's Got (Heckling) Talent.
The pro strat is to hire ventriloquists.
That's an amazing idea!
Don’t give them any ideas.
Just wait until you hear what the Philly Phanatic does *on* opposing dugouts
I heard he once performed oral sex on Gritty to completion during a day game against San Francisco.
Right into a comically oversized tub of popcorn that he somehow ended up dumping on John Kruk
Always have always will
We’re gonna see teams hiring people with good impressions of the opposing teams coaching staff to sit behind their dugout
I love going to dollar beer night and heckling from behind the away dugout. Gotta make baseball entertaining somehow.
Teams putting out casting calls for ventriloquist impressionists as we speak.
I mean if umps are little bitches? Yes
I am all for harassing the dumbass umps 👍
The fan yelled “let’s go home plate”. Ump’s skin so thin and fragile you need museum gloves to be near him.
The irony in all of this though only makes that statement better and also valid.
His name is Harry Hunter Wendelstedt III. That should be all you need to know that this guy wasn't exactly raised hard.
Double H! The pedigree.
I’m not really into baseball (I know how the game works) but what does this mean? Is the fan chirping the batter to bat better, the catcher to call better pitches, or the umpire to be better at their job? I guess what I’m asking is does “home plate” necessarily mean the umpire, and is “let’s go” necessarily bad?
Essentially he said "you suck ump get it together"
or "get on with it"
Ump is behind home plate, it's a sarcastic comment that means the opposite.
Fans go to baseball games to see the umps so just rooting him on /s In this context “home plate” is the home plate umpire and “let’s go” is basically come on, be better.
It wasn't even a replay. The broadcast was showing Boone live when he got thrown out. Ump even said he didn't care who said it. Absolute horseshit.
>can’t control his emotions and can’t make rational judgments maybe he shouldn’t be an umpire… Dude, that's a prerequisite.
He could also be a cop.
Imagine if the ump just shot players instead of kicking them out of the game.
Dude this is a league that employs Angel Hernandez. MLB Refs do not give a fuck about the quality of the game.
This like 3rd grade shit… lol
its all on audio, the ump literally said the words "i dont care" these assholes have SUCH a kush job and get to lay their ego like a giant dick across the whole field and NOTHING can be done about it until they retire or die theyre like the only fucking people who can reverse a decision like that
Embarassing conduct from an official.
MLB just needs to shitcan every ump in the league and replace them with robots.
I don't think they can program robots to be big enough assholes.
We have the technology... We can replace him Edit: RoboCop reference, not trying to state the obvious. It is pretty cool that we theoretically could
Awesome. Looks like someone went to the "Angel Hernandez school of blind and IDGAF umpiring".
Baseball umpires are the thinnest-skinned refs of any sport.
>If Wendelstedt can’t control his emotions and can’t make rational judgments maybe he shouldn’t be an umpire…. We wouldnt have any umpires if that was the criteria.
Sounds like he could be a cop
This sounds like normal ump behavior to me.
Yes hello, welcome to English PL football.
Tim Duncan ejected for laughing vibes. Ump needs anger management
If Angel Hernandez can keep his job, there is no disqualification possible.
I've always loved baseball and the umpires were always my favoite players. I went to games just to see them. No.....wait.....
I haven’t watched a MLB game in over 10 years and I still know who Angel Hernandez is. I barely even know the rules to the sport, but I can still see how horrible of an umpire he is.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Angel Hernandez hates baseball.
feeling's mutual
baseball hates Angel Hernandez
Nothing against them as people, but when we know an umpire's name as well as we know the player's names there is a problem. The only three umpires who have names that I care about are Jim Joyce, who once made a horrible call but owned up to it immediately, John McSherry, who literally died on the field, and Eric Gregg, because of his personality and the fact that his strike zone was basically "did it hit the hot dog vendor? No? Strike three!".
I can only name a single player lol but to be fair Ella De La Cruz is incredible, and that would be the equivalent of someone only being able to name like Patrick Mahomes or Lionel Messi only but also the head ref.
I know De La Cruz fell off during the second half last year, but those first few months were amazing, and he's off to a good start this year. I see, and hope, that he's got a bright future because he's super exciting to watch.
> Ella De La Cruz Looks like you can only name 75% of a single player.
Lmao I didn’t even notice that’s a really bad fuck up to Y and A are not that close lol
Doesn't he like legally suck? He tried to sue claiming racism prevented him from umpiring bigger games and it was actually legally found he just sucked so bad they didn't want him doing it.
He sucks; but he’s not the worst. In the bottom third, for sure, but there are others worse. Like he literally had an average rating in his home plate game on Saturday. The reason he has the notoriety is that a) when he is bad he is really bad and b ) he has a hair trigger temper when it comes to questioning him.
The only baseball I watch is Jomboy.
That's racist bro. For those who don't know he tried to pull the race card when really he's just shit.
You would if Frank Drebin was the ump. https://youtu.be/x-S-eeInJVk?feature=shared
That's actually Enrico Pallazzo.
Umpire fans are having a great season right now.
So, I don't follow baseball, but is this actually something that teams have no recourse for? Like, an umpire can interfere in a game without any legitimate cause for doing so, and there's nothing anyone can actually do about it?
From what I understand (as both a non-baseball follower, and Australian), that during a game of baseball at a professional level, the umpire is basically god, and has the power to eject anyone(?) while a game is happening, which includes audience members.
Mascots too https://youtu.be/pmzeK6oAtkk?si=LeirdAevFnXrFI8u
And musicians! https://abcnews.go.com/US/blind-mice-florida-music-intern-ejected-baseball-game/story?id=16915607
And other umpires! https://youtu.be/Tn4LQyKUQMk?si=CQDB_0HGez1CTOAI
At least Joe West has retired...
And my axe!
And my sword!
How about that
I knew what this would be before I clicked it... Now I feel old...
Don’t forget Mongo during the 7th inning stretch! I was at that game. Hilarious.
The head umpire is the ultimate arbiter of the rules of the game, and has final say regarding any judgement calls. They also act in some capacity as the representative of MLB during the game. Umpires have the authority to eject from the game any person on the team (coach, player, manager, etc). This authority kind of extends to team members off the field as well, as demonstrated by the time [a minor league umpire once ejected the stadium organist for playing "3 Blind Mice"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib69pYyce6c). *Usually* ejections come after warnings, or after some egregious action. In the case of managers it usually happens after a manger comes out to argue a call, and sometimes it's a tactic a manager uses to get his team and the home crowd fired up. Strictly speaking, [under the MLB definition](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/umpire), umpires do not have the authority to eject fans. However, due to their status as the head official of the game, if they ask stadium officials to remove a fan, the stadium officials will probably not be disinclined to acquiesce to their request.
> However, due to their status as the head official of the game, if they ask stadium officials to remove a fan, the stadium officials will probably not be disinclined to acquiesce to their request. Also, because the team has no recourse against an umpire's decision, they basically have to agree to their request or risk the umpire heavily slanting calls against their team. It's pretty much blackmail
Cant wait for roboumps. Jfc
Savvy
Why doesn't the guy with the bat and muscles beat the umpire to death?
Because there is no justice in this world.
This is true in many sports. I think the MLBUA just didn't give a shit about their declining quality. Most other orgs will constantly be reviewing their referees.
I definitely get the sense that getting calls right is less important than saving face. Which, ironically, creates situations in which umpires who are clearly in the wrong have to continue to double down until everyone just sort of shrugs their shoulders and moves on.
>which includes audience members. Some umps do believe this but the MLB stance is that they cannot and should never try this because if you did it for no reason to someone of a protected class the lawsuit would be 7 figures and the mlb as an org would be in immense trouble if a court looked at it. They've come dangerously close to it a few times and in the last decade have issued internal memos to never do it
The same is true in (association) football. There is basically no recourse for teams who suffer due to bad refereeing, unless you can prove actual corruption
Huge reason why baseball is dying. It's too based in its own history, where umpires were to keep the sportsmanship of the game, as well as ref. Well, it's not 1910 anymore. "America's game" is football, not baseball. The guys playing are making millions, not hundreds. It needs to modernize and the umps need to be held accountable
That’s true in pretty much all major sports…
Pretty much. The umps are protected by their rather powerful umpire’s union, so those with ego problems are able to get away with all kinds of bullshit on the field. If you’re interested in learning more about terrible, self-serving umpires, look up Joe West and Angel Hernandez to get started.
It’s never good when you recognize an umpires name
[удалено]
There’s a fantastic quote from Bill Klem, one of the great baseball umpires of yore: “The best-umpired game is the game in which the fans cannot recall the umpires who worked it.” Once upon a time, umps took their charge seriously, and carried themselves with silent aplomb.
Fucking Angel. . . .
Gah, I don't even follow baseball but I know Angel Hernandez. His strike calling is absolutely brutal, one after another balls were well outside the zone and he just kept calling them strikes. And the MLB does nothing to correct it.
It's a lot of work to push back against a union. Usually you need documentation out the ass and show a continued decline in their work. Someone like Hernandez could _easily_ be canned if someone had the balls to actually do the work to do so. But, like every organization with a union, people with the power ignore it because it's easier to just bitch about the union. My suspicion is they're giving the umpire's union enough rope to hang themselves with to push them out and replace them with some sort of computer system to deal with it.
There was an interesting discussion on Pat Mcafee's show with Jeff Passan I watched the other day, I didn't even realize there was an ump's union but it's painful to see how they shield guys like this who are so clearly bad at their jobs. I think they're going overboard trying to protect themselves against automated AI ump reviews, but by protecting these bad umps are making the best argument why it needs to happen, all against their own best interests.
i dont watch or care about baseball at all and I know who Angel Hernandez is. That ain't good chief lmao
Lot of em are shit. Angel averages like 88% just 4.4% below average behind the plate which sounds ok at first but then that means he fucks up like ~20-30 pitches a game, and every who plays knows even a single ball or strike dramatically alters team/player strategy. He's also very inconsistent, and his ego is too big for the pitch. Atleast a few of the bad ones have a stable strike zone. Thing is even the decent ones miss like 10-15 pitches a game. Which again doesn't sound bad but that's like 40,000 missed pitches by all these guys over a season. I've seen some perfect or near perfect umps and they mostly have one thing in common... They are a 25-35 dude who's eyes still fuckin work. Wow who knew having eyes could lead to better calls behind the plate!
Thanks.
Damn, not even Baseball is safe from qualified immunity.
>The umps are protected by their rather powerful umpire’s union I don't buy it. The MLB has beaten Angel Hernandez in court already. If they *really* wanted him gone, he'd be gone. They probably consider it too expensive.
To be fair, though, before the union umpires could and were beaten up on the field. I'm not excusing Joe or Angel, but some NASTY stuff happened to previous ones.
The damage of ejecting the manager is actually limited. Boone can continue to manager the team from his office inside the stadium or let his bench coach do most of the work. MLB managers today have far less decisions to make in a game than they used to. They tend to manage for the long run like developing young players or handling the bullpen so nobody burns out.
Yeah, umps can eject you for any reason or no reason. Even as an attendee.
Umpires are the poster children for Insecurity
they're the cops of baseball
Funny you mention that because after reading about how nobody can do anything against them, I immediately thought qualified immunity.
Not even just baseball. Tennis umpires have been getting blasted pretty good past couple weeks for shit calls and no repercussions
Same for Premier League refs, except it's a years-long trend at this point.
worst rule change was automatic ejection for arguing balls and strikes. wendeslstadt i believe is a nepo umpire
That's always been a thing though. Usually umps give some leeway but games would take forever if you were allowed to argue every pitch
The sequence of Boone causally leaning against the railing chewing gum and checking his nails then jumping out of the dugout very animatedly cause he got ejected was hilarious.
Best thing the MLB could do would be fire the entire umpires union and start from scratch, or better yet go with robot umps.
The whole “robo umps” thing only concerns balls and strikes. Human umps are still needed for making calls on the field as well as other stuff like ejections.
Robo umps would largely remove the need for ejections since those mostly come from arguing balls and strikes and umps fragile egos like in this case.
There's a lot more stuff than just balls and strikes that they argue... whether a player checked his swing, whether a pitcher threw at a batter intentionally, whether a player was tagged out or safe, etc
Checked swings can be determined by robo umps, probably at the same level if not better, "whether a player was tagged out or safe," generally straight forward and 99/100 times if its close, it is called on the field, then reviewed in the booth. Why call it on the field if you're going to review it in the booth anyways? also just because there are robo-umps doesn't mean there are 0 human officials to defer to, just not ones on field. Humans can sit with 20 screens in front of them to have a BETTER judgement than someone on the field.
Just do it with VAR and have a light that shows if safe or out based on cameras having multiple angles. Then have 1 dude there just to let managers yell at him so they can still get ejected when they want to
I want that for basketball too, most of the foul calls are from a ref behind the actual play who can’t see what happened.
I am a Lakers fan and the 2nd playoff game against the nuggets. There was a run with no fouls at the end of the game. Mostly no fouls at the end, it was great. Then 30 seconds before game end, Bron gets a foul call on him. The call, Bron literally did not touch Murray. This shit foul call decided the game. Even the announcers said the call should be challenged. I get it bad calls happen, but there needs to be a mechanism to scrutinize playoff foul calls and especially foul calls at the end of the game. For all we know this ref straight up legitimately decided a game with no way to counter them. Even dumber, the Lakers led the entire game. Nuggets didn't lead until the very end. I normally don't care about calls, but fuck making such a blatantly bad call at the end of a playoff game. Literally no contact, there has to be consequences for high impact calls like this. I dont want refs deciding games to be perfectly honest. Why they decided to be good about not calling fouls, then calling the worst call I've seen in memory at the end of the game baffles me. Even if we have to extend time, I'd rather actual play decide a game and not a ref at the end of the game. Its too easily abusable. In fact, there should be different rules at the end of the game to reflect the fact people play harder. They didn't need to decide that game, there was no need for it. They ruined a super competitive game and I truthfully believe it was stolen. I dont think I've said any other Laker games were stolen, but fuck these refs.
All the fan said was “come on home plate”. The umpires butchered the call in the first place and can’t take any criticism.
This is how you truly know we are dealing with the ejection GOAT. Boone didn’t say a word and still got ejected. The skill is just impeccable
From what I understand, Japanese Baseball doesn't have this problem. They have a robo ump calling balls and strikes and field umps handling the rest, but I've never heard of egotist umps on the field being even *remotely* as terrible as, say, Angel Hernandez.
I’ve seen them get pretty heated at the robo umps.
haha, imagine yelling at a sensor
I take it you don't work in tech
Hopefully we’re heading this way.
It's being tested in the minor leagues now, should see it in a couple years
I'm gonna develop an AI to mimic opposing teams voices to get all the good players ejected so I can hedge my gambling bets.
Someone was jealous of all the attention Angel Hernandez was getting……….
Only 2 "jobs" should not be unionized. Cops and umpires
Umpires are baseball cops
Good luck getting either to admit they're wrong
Aren't most umps and refs lawyers ?
Just fire all umpires. Their job is to make sure the game is fair, but 1) they can’t even do that right, and 2) they’re actively tampering with it when they throw out players and managers who get frustrated with them sucking at their jobs. The broadcast has strike zone technology. We have replay that can call players out or safe with 100% accuracy. Fire the umpires.
This made me think of an interview that Stephen Merchant gave about bringing The Office over from the UK. He said one of the changes they had to make was to the main character (Michael Scott in the US version). They said that Americans would never accept that someone so spectacularly bad at his job could continue to keep doing that job for years. It happens in the UK but not in the US. Wtaf, umps?
Who is worse, an MLB umpire or a US Congressman?
Not even close. Umpires aren’t actively hurting the country for personal gain
Well they ruin a simple child's game I like so. Lol
And everyone involved that an umpire affects still gets to collect their fat check and go home in their nice car to their nice house and live a relatively decent existence. Even guys on the DFA bubble are still making a decent income per game.
congress
Umpires are just bad at making judgement calls, congress are obsessed with kids genitals and murdering brown people.
Also enriching themselves and their corporate donors.
Usually trying to cover all those bases at the same time!
Angel Hernandez
Angel Hernandez is about as petty, mean-spirited, pathological, and crooked as humans can be and he still doesn't hold a candle to the average city official, let alone a member of Congress.
President Hernandez
Don’t encourage this lol
Umpires suck big farts
Umps need to start being held accountable
Umps not only unable to call balls and strikes, now they can't even call boo's correctly either. Blind and deaf is a rough combo
And this is why baseball is a joke lol.
Why are umpires such babies?
And then when it came out that it was a fan he doubled down on the ejection
Said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m DONE watching baseball and not giving the MLB another fucking dime until they switch to robot umps or fire every one of these assholes. Check swings, close calls, intentional hit batters can all be verified by a computer. It’s fucking 2024. Eject these fucking assholes. I will continue to enjoy the Stanley Cup playoffs instead.
Use AI to duplicate Manager's voice... use mobile phone and just BLAST it behind the dugout = Every MLB manager gonna be ejected. MLB needs better UMPs but maybe a system in place where ONE Ump can't throw people out (unless its a player on the field). But someone behind and out of sight this shit needs better failsafes
I don't watch baseball, but I enjoy watching Jomboy baseball breakdowns. The relationship between professional managers and umpires strikes me as one of the strangest things in modern sports culture. Why in that one sport is it allowed/expected that if the manager doesn't like the ump's call, he gets right up in the ump's face and starts screaming at him? And then the ump screams back at him, and they scream at each other for a while, and eventually the ump ejects the manager, and then the manager keeps screaming as he's walking away. It's this little performative dance they do, and it's absolutely bizarre.
Based on the article, it sounds like Boone was ejected because the umpire was on a power trip, not because of heckling. Like, he acknowledged the umpire’s warning, and the moment he did, he was ejected. Then the umpire said “I don’t care who said it, you’re gone”. What a baby. They should fire his ass.
So is Yankees going to submit a formal complaint or what is there remediation did they win or lose that game?
Only in Baseball do casual fans know the names of the officials. I can't ever remember even hearing an officials name in Football. MLB is a fucking joke.
Nah there are a few well known screwups in the NFL. Brad Allen, Bill Leavy, Bill Vinovich to name a few. Some high profile blown calls and manipulated games.
MLB must test to find the most fragile egos to find umpires.
Robo umps
MLB is a joke now with the umpires and other regulations. So hard to watch.
Can umpires ever not be useless
If this happened in basketball there wouldn’t be any players OR coaches after 5 minutes in a game.
How about a compromise, automate the strike zone completely, give human umps no say whatsoever in calling balls and strikes. In exchange let the umps make all the calls around the diamond that aren’t balls/strikes. Seems fair to me
Why don't we just run a cloning program off of Pat Hoberg's beautiful chin cells and call it a day?
I am so sick of hearing about umpires on a power trip. Tossing players, managers, and even STADIUM employees for some of the most innocuous things I've ever seen. At this point I think a player could look at an umpire with an angry expression and get a lifetime ban by these obese chuckleheads.
Fire all the umps and replace them with fans chosen by lottery. The fan-umps get free beer between innings, a photo-op with the mascot, and a $20 discount on stadium hot dogs.
> a $20 discount on stadium hot dogs. Surely they could offer better than a half priced hot dog though.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I dont know why we still have umpires. Their jobs are easily replaceable by robots.
The Umpire is blind!
If you want to see a breakthrough of this: https://youtu.be/ojqxAZuHrhM?si=bKn0x8KpFCiYm__j
Refs impacting games with no repercussions BECAUSE THATS WHAT MLB WANTS THEM TO DO And if you complain about it? Pony up!
The umpires' union will make one final gamble on sports: investing in the automation of umpiring
One day the Umpires will blow the lid of this charade and realize they have ultimate power and truly use it. It would be great to see one just walk out and start obviously doing bad calls to make one of the teams win. Yeah, they might be fired, but the results of that game will stand because his all powerful position as Lord of the Game means his calls must be accepted. Doesn't matter if this guy did anything wrong or not, the Lord spake, it is his privilege alone to decide how the game goes, and therefore this man is guilty, and the Lord's decision must be accepted and enforced.
Now I'm going to sit behind the away teams dugout and heckle the umps
Sports officiating has been straight trash across all formats for the last 20 years
This should come with a fine for the ump crew. They should repay Boone the ejection fine.
I don’t remember when I started noticing Hunter Wendelstedt, but at a certain point around 20 years ago I just started knowing that when I saw his name in the umpire crew it was going to be a bad time.
I can’t wait for AI to take over their jobs.
Boone would have said something to get tossed eventually...
Baseball just won't stop umpires being part of the game rather than observers.
No consequences for that ump who's in his feelings?
Baseball umpires are a joke, and they make the game a joke. I'll never be convinced otherwise. They can be replaced instantly by camera technology.