If you had a bet down on the Oakland A’s to beat the Astros last week, you are probably still angry. Adam Rosales hit a home-run but didn’t get credit for it. In the words of more than one fan “he was robbed.”… and he was.
Year after year, MLB Umpire Angel Hernandez is ranked way down in the bottom 10% of all working major league umpires… but he keeps on working. Once again, it was Hernandez and his crew that blew the call against the A’s.
Once again, sports fans and sports bettors in sports bars all across the country and asking the question, “how can they keep this guy on the payroll when he continues to foul up week after week.”
Just how much money Angel Hernandez has cost bookies and bettors is impossible to calculate… but, you can bet it’s a lot. Many are wondering just how this guy can keep ticking his ball-strike indicator when he is so universally unpopular with players, managers… and of course, gamblers everywhere.
Although often questioned on the situation, the powers that be in Major League Baseball can’t seem to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Tenure just does not cut it.
There is hardly a team manager, from the most flamboyant to the most mild-mannered, who have not had major confrontations with Hernandez. One disgruntled trainer when asked about Hernandez after the game told the press “He’s no Angel.”
Angel Hernandez embodies a unique combination of incompetence and arrogance that riles up so many players and managers and causes them to lose their cool… which gives Hernandez an excuse to eject them from the game… which he does with alarming regularity these days… just as he has done ever since entering MLB in 1993.
Another MLB Umpire, Fieldin Culbreth, was suspended for two games because he and his crew got the rules wrong on a change of pitchers. Even when the rule involved was pointed out to them… they still got it wrong.
Why Culbreth was suspended and Hernandez was not is a mystery to some but MLB is calling the Hernandez case a “judgment call” while the Culbreth call was a direct breach of the rules that the Umps should have been aware of.
If it comes down to that one game that keeps the A’s out of the playoffs, as one writer put it, “all hell is going to break loose.”… especially back at the sportsbars.
