For years, Angel Hernández has drawn my score as worst ump in the Majors. I think he may be a rare case where replay has helped the ump.
It used to be, any time that a call that he made was questioned and was very close, any argument at all would result in an ejection. I never respected at all an ump who I thought had rabbit ears. Remember, this is the guy who tried to have Steve McMichael ejected after he sang the 7th inning stretch and said something like, “Get that guy”.
I was mortified when I saw that MLB had seen fit to let this man behind the plate in game four of the NLCS. Watching the game, he seemed a different ref. Nothing the Dodgers yelled at him in the second inning when his out call of Gonzalez was upheld seemed to bother him at all. Later, Rizzo started towards first, thinking he’d drawn a walk when a second strike had been called. We know what happened after that (Rizzo left the park), but the recorded conversation between Rizzo and Hernandez was, something like, (From Rizzo) “Sorry, dude, my bad”, “No worries”, was not expected at all.
I would like to apologize just for my thoughts to Angel – it could be that we have a better era between fans and umps as well.
– Ron Swanson
