It was a bad week for baseball umpires. Two badly blown calls in two games last week. Calls that I don't see how were missed. These weren't out/safe, or ball/strike that an umpire has to make a snap judgment on. These were looking at an instant replay for as long as necessary and simply not knowing the rules.
Everyone I know that saw the replay of Oakland's Adam Rosales drive thought the ball was a home run. Both radio and tv crews said on their broadcasts before Angel Hernandez' ruling that the ball hit over the yellow home run line. When I mean both, I mean two Oakland broadcast teams and two Cleveland broadcast teams. If A's manager Bob Melvin and Tribe skipper Terry Francona had looked at it together and had to determine the call, I believe they both would have said HR. So I am not sure what Hernandez was looking at. I think baseball needs to do what hockey does and have the video replay looked at in the league office in New York and have them make the decision or have a replay ump upstairs look at things. This would speed play and take the people out the discussion that made the original call. You might even have the umpires union in favor of this if you put an extra umpire on every crew. It would add 15 jobs and allow an umpire to basically have a night off after taking the plate.
The second mistake occurred in Houston where Fieldin Culbreth and his crew didn't know a very important rule. A relief pitcher must come in and pitch to a batter when summoned from the bullpen. Astros rookie manager Bo Porter thought he could change pitchers again if the Angels sent up a different pinch hitter. I would have loved to have heard Mike Scioscia the Angels manager going out to them to argue when Porter went out to change pitchers after Scioscia sent up another hitter. What did Scioscia say and why didn't that prompt the umpires to agree with him and force the Astros to keep the original reliever? I for one was disappointed that the Angels came back and won. I would have loved to have seen what Bud Selig did with Scioscia's protest. Baseball said that while the home run call in the A's game was wrong it was a judgment call and couldn't be reversed. The Angels were protesting a rule interpretation. I think baseball would have had to do something.
There are a lot of crazy rules in the game of baseball….like if you foul off a bunt on a third strike you are out, or the infield fly rule, or when you are hit by pitch but made no effort to get out of the way a batter can be denied first base. Umpires are expected to know these rules. To me it was much more embarrassing to miss that than whether something was a home run or not. Culbreth's suspension was warranted. But what about the rest of his crew. When the umpires huddle does the one that made the call even listen to the other three? Do the other three even say anything? To me the biggest problem with baseball umpires is that it doesn't seem that the most important thing is to get the call right. It is about not showing up who has the call. If a crew would huddle and make the call right the original umpire might look foolish for a second, but no one would be complaining after the fact at all. Come on Selig players and coaches work to get better. How about the umpires too?
