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ESPN’s Jeff Passan thinks criticism of Ángel Hernández is “valid”, even in the wake of Hernández’s abrupt retirement.
We should never, ever know an umpire by name. A good official is an anonymous one. They are someone who embodies the concept of “if you do it right, they’ll think you did nothing at all.” A good umpire won’t gain any notoriety because we will regard their performance with the same disinterest as we would a robot on an assembly line. They should do their job perfectly because they do not know how to do it poorly. Jeff Passan would agree that this does not describe the infamous Ángel Hernández.
Baseball fans are likely (and unfortunately) familiar with Ángel Hernández. The freshly retired MLB umpire has made quite a name for himself due to a years long campaign of awful, awful calls. Hernández seemed to have a special knack for making the worst call at the most critical times. His exit from his role in baseball seemed somewhat abrupt to most fans.
However, it was a long time coming. Hernández’s poor performance, reputation, and bad temper created tension with Major League Baseball. He even sued his employer for discrimination, an act that I’m sure did not make many friends for him. His health has declined, as he missed most of the 2023 season with an injury. Hernández and the MLB faced outside pressure as well, receiving almost ceaseless criticism on social media. Jeff Passan thinks this angle did much to influence Hernández’s exit from the game.
Appearing on The Rich Eisen Show, Passan acknowledged and defended social media’s role in criticizing and ousting the maligned umpire. Passan believes that a social media “firestorm” eventually pushed Hernández over the edge.
“A lot of that stuff, frankly, led to him going away. He got tired of it. He got tired of the social media firestorm that exists. Frankly, I will acknowledge this is understandable because there are parts of his job where he was genuinely bad. And it was magnified by the ubiquity of baseball on social media now. And how every time he would do something wrong, it would get put out there. And then it would almost just compound upon itself…You just had this echo chamber of Ángel Hernández awfulness that, I think, in the end, wound up being part of his undoing.”
However, Jeff Passan does not think that Hernández’s reaction invalidates the criticism, stating “We expect a certain level of competence from our officials.” Passan argues that umpires can’t just be “good”, but must be “great”.
“You have to be the best in the world at what you do, especially when you have a reputation like he did. Especially when you sue your employer like he has. I mean, there was just so much baggage there with Ángel Hernández that I think everyone involved recognized in the end; this ultimately will be a better thing for him and the league, too.”
