In a perfect world umpire Angel Hernandez would have made the correct call on Wednesday night when Adam Rosales hit a game tying home run with two outs in the top of the ninth inning off Cleveland Indians closer Chris Perez. Of course that didn’t happen and instead made an excuse about where the ball hit as not being conclusive enough to overturn the call of a double.
Then Hernandez refused to admit his mistake, have his conversation recorded with the media and the next day hid behind Randy Marsh the supervisor of umpires who also refused to let him speak with the media for any followup questions about what happened.
Major League Baseball reviewed what happened after the fact and Joe Torre on Thursday issued a written statement about the call. It was obvious the call wasn’t going to get changed and replaying the game at 4-4 in the ninth inning was never going to happen. As Indians fans, Oakland Athletics fans, announcers for both teams and anyone who was watching the game on MLB.com knew it was a home run and got confirmed as well.
Basically Torre admitted the call was wrong, yet it’s too bad, so sad for the A’s. What makes it worse there was an opportunity to make sure that a situation like this never happened again and MLB failed to act showing no credibility.
Interestingly enough, Hernandez didn’t receive any discipline for the call. Yet, Fieldin Culbreth got suspended two games and fined an undisclosed amount for allowing an illegal pitching change, also fined were three other umpires for allowing it and not knowing the rules. The Los Angeles Angels protested the call and rallied to win the game against the Houston Astros.
This wasn’t a judgment call, so doesn’t it make sense that the protest is granted? It should go back to left-hander Wesley Wright on the mound and the Angels trailing 5-3 in the seventh inning.
MLB clearly has a mess on its hands the past couple of days and one thing is for sure, Torre shouldn’t have a job soon.