Angel Hernandez, MLB's most controversial umpire, has retired. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
Controversial Major League Baseball umpire, Angel Hernández is retiring mid-season. In doing so, it shows just how bad his reputation had gotten.
Barring health concerns, it’s unprecedented for an umpire to suddenly up and retire not even halfway through a season. Hernández appears to be doing so. As first reported late Monday evening by USA Today, he’s walking away having last being behind the plate between the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Guardians on May 9th.
In a statement to USA Today, Hernández confirmed that he’s leaving.
"Starting with my first major league game in 1991, I have had the very good experience of living out my childhood dream of umpiring in the major leagues. I treasured the camaraderie of my colleagues and the friendships I have made along the way.
"I have decided that I want to spend more time with my family."
No umpire in the last 30 years has been more maligned than Hernández. Starting in 1993, his calls – both behind the plate and on the base paths – were historically bad. According to the Umpire Auditor account on Twitter, he ranked as the worst in all of MLB last season racking up 161 bad calls in 10 games, including the lowest-ranked game for the season.
In a sign that even the MLB Umpires Union was fed up, Hernández had been working with MLB for the last two weeks on a compensation plan to allow him to walk away from the game right now, according to the USA Today report. A deal was reached over the Memorial Day weekend. One has to wonder whether he’ll receive his full-season pay and service time which could impact his pension.
Hernández was vilified by the players for his performance during games, but he also didn’t make friends with the league either. In 2017 he filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against MLB claiming he was left off postseason assignments due to race. Hernández was born in Havana, Cuba. At the time, the lawsuit claimed that during the 2016 season, his “accuracy calling balls and strikes behind the plate increased from 92.19% in 2002 to 96.88% in 2016.”
The case was dismissed by U.S. District Court in 2021 and upheld by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that the case was without merit saying in part that “Hernández had not demonstrated pretext at the final step of the burden-shifting inquiry, the district court was not finding facts” and “determined that despite the differences between the parties on these factual questions, the sum total of the evidence ‘fails to give rise to a genuine dispute of fact on the issue of pretext for discrimination.’”
"There have been many positive changes in the game of baseball since I first entered the profession," Hernández said in his statement Monday. "This includes the expansion and promotion of minorities. I am proud that I was able to be an active participant in that goal while being a major league umpire."
