No MLB umpire garners more criticism than 62-year-old Ángel Hernández, who has been in the big leagues since 1991, but his outing on Thursday will especially go down as an all-time forgettable performance.
Hernández was the home plate umpire for the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home game against the Washington Nationals at PNC Park on Thursday. And let’s just say that several X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts who track MLB umpire performances did not exactly have glowing reviews for Hernández.
Citing data from Umpire Scorecards, Codify noted that Thursday marked “the lowest single-game accuracy rate” for balls and strike calls by an MLB umpire in five years:
Umpire Scorecards’ data showed that Hernández had a woeful 65 percent accuracy on strike calls. As you can see in their graphics, 12 of 34 “true balls” were called strikes by Hernández. His overall accuracy score came in at 84.4.
According to data from Umpire Auditor, this was the “worst” game by an MLB umpire this season. Their data claims that he missed 16 of 92 calls, garnering a woeful 82.6 correct call rate.
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Despite his long list of controversial and obvious blown calls, Major League Baseball continues to stand by Hernández. Of course, it’s almost impossible for any referee/umpire/official of any professional sport to actually get fired.
But Hernández’s performance on Thursday is just another reminder that MLB will be better off with an automated strike zone system, which is widely expected to debut in 2024.
