It didn’t take long for the presence of the home plate to be felt during last night’s divisional series matchup between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. Many fans complained about Tony Randazzo’s strikezone in game one but after reviewing the data he actually did a pretty good job compared to the perception fans and players had of him during the actual game. The perception that Angel Hernandez was doing a miserable job last night while behind the plate was actually a little closer to reality then many of us, especially Major League Baseball, would like to believe.
Before we get to the actual numbers and raw data, here is an overview of Hernandez:
Name: Angel Hernandez
Uniform number: 55
Age: 50
Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 198 pounds
First year as MLB umpire: 1991
Total MLB games worked through 2011: 2,516 (home plate: 644)
Previous experience: Florida State League, Carolina League, Southern League, American Association, Inter-Alliance in Venezuela
Career ejections: 68
No-hitters called: None. (Hernandez was at third base for Jered Weaver’s no-no this season, while Mark Carlson was behind the plate.)
Over/under record (1999-2011): 169-187
Hated in: Chicago, San Diego, Toronto, Tampa Bay
Notable alleged blown calls: Padres-Diamondbacks, May 17, 2011; Rangers-Marlins, July 3, 2011; Phillies-Diamondbacks, April 24, 2012.
Claim to fame: Ejected former Bears defensive end Steve McMichael from a Cubs game in 2001. McMichael made a reference to Hernandez’s umpiring before he sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and Hernandez had him tossed from the stadium. (Also, Hernandez has been consistently voted by the players as one of baseball’s worst umpires.)
Scouting report from Major League Umpires’ Performance, 2007-2010, by Andy Goldblatt:
He is among the most vilified umpires in the major leagues. … Looking at his annual plate-calling numbers, it’s easy to see why critics contend that Hernandez has an inconsistent strike zone. … His K/9 was consistently below average [from 2007-2009], but then shot up in 2010. Hernandez’s R/9 has also jumped around.
Scouting report from Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington:
Angel is just bad. That’s all there is to it.
Average K/9 (2011): 14.3
Average BB/9 (2011): 6.0
True fact: Is the only MLB umpire who was born in Cuba. After Ozzie Guillen came under fire for comments regarding Fidel Castro, Hernandez said, “Do you really think he loves Castro? C’mon, he doesn’t even know him.”
If there is one thing I have learned about Angel Hernandez it is this – the above scouting report is pretty spot-on in detailing his inconsistent approach behind the plate and his attitude about it towards the managers and players is even worse. Being an official for any sports (especially baseball), having to make judgment calls and deal with constant criticism over the job you do (good or bad), is a very tough job and you are really only ever noticed when you perform poorly at it. Hernandez though seems to take it to a whole new level.
Last night Hernandez had a strikezone that would shift from being a big large, or would expand somewhat, for right-handed hitters and then the same thing would occasionally happen on the left-handed hitters side of the batter’s box. This is something that impacted the game for both teams but what’s even worse is that Hernandez has always been inconsistent like this and his inconsistencies occur during the games.
The man has never seemed to truly improve from game to game or season to season, which coincidentally enough is very similar to his overall attitude towards those who question his ability to do his job with any sort of consistency.
Here’s another absolute gem by Hernandez:
7.08
Any runner is out when —
(a) (1) He runs more than three feet away from his baseline to avoid being tagged unless his action is to avoid interference with a fielder fielding a batted ball. A runner’s baseline is established when the tag attempt occurs and is a straight line from the runner to the base he is attempting to reach safely.
Now, I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to interpreting every single rule on base running lanes but it appears to me that Ichiro was well beyond the three feet away from the baseline and was equally as far away from home plate when he performed his acrobats to avoid being tagged by Matt Wieters.
Maybe someone better suited to extrapolate on that rule can help us out here?
Now, there were 266 total pitches thrown in last night’s game with 16 total hits, four errors, three walks, and a few other things that help dwindle down the total number of chances an umpire gets to make a call behind the plate. The hitters last night were actually helping Hernandez out by allowing him less chances to get a call wrong but it didn’t seem to matter much as he still missed approximately 16 total calls during the game (not counting the Ichiro play).
The fact that Hernandez wasn’t even able to achieve a 90 percent correct call rate is incredibly bad, especially when stating that doing your job correctly just 90 percent of the time is a ‘good’ thing to begin with – what can I say, I’m a fair and generous person when trying not to make someone feel bad for the work that they do. Unfortunately this is one of those instances where it’s very difficult for me to be so nice and generous about it.
