Umpire Angel Hernandez continues to make us wonder how he keeps his job.
Hernandez had one of the worst blown strike calls of the season on Tuesday night. He was behind the plate for the New York Yankees-Toronto Blue Jays game and didn’t call a strike on this Masahiro Tanaka pitch down the middle to Randal Grichuk in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Angel Hernandez is just awful. Awful! pic.twitter.com/PyPHLlA5Jc
— Max Wildstein (@MaxWildstein) June 5, 2019
Here’s where the pitch was according to MLB.com’s tracking (check the green ball that’s marked No. 2):
Angel Hernandez called pitch #2 a ball. pic.twitter.com/jPAEWQ9iom
— Mike Nash (@MikeNash15) June 5, 2019
That should have made it an 0-2 count. Instead, due to Hernandez’s missed call, it was a 1-1 count and Grichuk homered on the next pitch.
Why did Hernandez miss the call? Probably because he was thrown off by Gary Sanchez setting up inside and expecting a pitch up and in. Tanaka missed Sanchez’s glove but still threw a clean strike. It really wasn’t close to a ball. This goes to show how Hernandez calls pitches based on expectation rather than execution, which is a poor trait for an umpire.
But it gets worse. He missed another couple of definite strikes that inning and called them balls.
RT to spread the word! This HAS to be the final time we see Angel Hernandez. There is something clearly wrong here, @MLB.
Four missed strike calls in ONE INNING! Two of them were right down the middle! pic.twitter.com/M8QL0pAFZ7
— Kyle (@KyleNYY) June 5, 2019
Hernandez has been terrible at his job for a while, something we’ve called out many times in the past.
Sadly, this might not even be the worst call from him we’ve ever seen.
