According to ESPN's Jeff Passan, controversial MLB umpire Angel Hernandez has called his last game.
The veteran umpire who regularly drew the ire of baseball fans, players, and managers alike has called it quits, effective immediately.
The 62-year-old debuted in 1991 as a National League umpire and began calling games in both leagues in the year 2000. The onset of on-screen K-zones on television broadcasts and the proliferation of social media did significant damage to Hernandez's reputation.
Fans could quickly upload videos, know for certain that he had gotten the call wrong (often by large margins), and distribute it on X/Twitter for widespread and immediate ridicule.
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But it wasn't just the fans who took issue with the veteran umpire's maddening inaccuracies and inconsistencies. In 2022, Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber was ejected from a game for an exasperated response to Hernandez's decision to ring him up on a pitch that missed the zone.
Schwarber's reaction went viral, and the Philly lefty's decision to show up the umpire, who was in the midst of a bad game,
The other development that shed light on Hernandez's poor performances was Umpire Scorecards, a website and Twitter account that tracks every pitch of every game, generates an estimated actual strike zone, calculates accuracy vs. expected accuracy, and the amount of expected favor the umpires gave to one team over the other with ball and strike calls.
The account tweets every game's scorecard the next day, and Hernandez's poor performance often generated much discussion on social media.
Hernandez had actually been on a three-game streak of decent performances culminating in what we now know will be his last behind the dish on May 5, but an April 16 game between the Brewers and Padres finished in the fourth percentile for accuracy.
In the wake of the news, fans have taken to social media to reminisce upon and recap some of Hernandez's less-than-stellar moments behind the plate.
With the retirement, the consensus pick as the worst balls-and-strikes caller in baseball is out of the game, and it's worth wondering if Hernandez will be the last figure to draw this level of disdain before automatic ball-and-strike calls make their way to MLB.
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