Angel Hernandez is Unbelievably Bad at His Job

 Angel Hernandez is back at it again. A couple nights ago he umpired a game between the Brewers and the Phillies. He was terrible all night, and in the ninth inning after being rung up on a pitch outside of the zone, Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies had enough. After the call Schwarber proceeded to throw his bat and helmet and in a rage, and he yelled at Hernandez on behalf of both teams, telling Hernandez that it was “f*cking horsesh*t,” and that he was terrible for both sides during that game. Schwarber had every right to argue the call considering that the call on him was Hernandez’s NINETEENTH MISSED CALL OF THE GAME. 

Hernandez is a historically bad umpire, at this point it’s what he’s known for. Even last night at a Louisville Baseball game I heard a fan shout sarcastically “nice call Angel Hernandez” after a missed call from the third base umpire. In his career, he has thousands of missed calls over the span of his career, and almost anyone that watches or plays Major League Baseball can tell you that the guy sucks at his job. In 2017 Angel Hernandez sued the MLB for racial discrimination, alleging that the MLB passed him up for World Series games because of racial reasonings. The case was ruled in favor of the MLB, and Judge J. Paul Oetken stated “The evidence shows beyond genuine dispute that an umpires leadership and situational management carried the day in MLB’s promotion decision.” So the MLB was basically calling him a bad umpire and that he didn’t deserve to umpire the World Weries games because of it. 

So if the MLB is even saying that he’s a bad umpire, then why has he not been fired yet? Well basically Angel is a part of a union with MLB umpires, so he can’t be fired unless it’s for something that has to do with misconduct, which sadly him being a terrible umpire doesn’t fall under that category. Then that begs another question, why is he still behind the plate for games? Can’t they just put him as the first or third base umpire? Well they can, but he still sucks at that as well. Take game 3 of the ALDS in 2018 for example. He had three calls at first base overturned by video review. None of these calls would’ve had big impacts on the game because it was a blowout but still, 3 overturned calls in one game by the same umpire is just flat out terrible. You can read more about that game here. 

All in all, Angel is a terrible umpire that shouldn’t be anywhere close to a meaningful MLB game. But sadly, we’re going to still see a lot of him in the coming years, since he’s in the union and can umpire for as long as he wants.