I don't even have to say his name. If you've followed baseball over the last decade, you know who is considered the worst umpire in baseball. The memes are endless on social media.
Angel Hernandez has been so bad at his job that fans celebrated the fact that he didn't umpire a game this season until late in the summer. While most of the hate has been in random anecdotal incidences (read: fans yelling on Twitter/X about terrible calls), we now have definitive proof of Hernandez's incompetence.
Umpire Auditor, a social media account dedicated to tracking MLB umpire accuracy, determined Hernandez's performance in last night's game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals was the worst of the season, and the worst since April 2022. That's almost two full seasons worth.
Umpire Angel Hernandez called the worst game of the season yesterday and the worst since April 2022.
He only had to make 92 calls, but he missed 16 of them for a correct call rate of 82.6%.#Pirates #Nationals pic.twitter.com/TeTWosSGSD
— Umpire Auditor (@UmpireAuditor) September 15, 2023
The footage is hard to watch. Hernandez routinely called pitches many inches off the plate as strikes, and somehow just missed blatant strikes low in the zone. Batters had to be dumbfounded.
Hernandez missed 16 of his 92 calls, good for 82.6%. Even if you don't believe this account, another site that tracks umpires, Umpire Scorecards, determined Hernandez's accuracy was 83.9%, which is easily the worst called game all season. In fact, that would be the worst in the last five years.
Yesterday, Ángel Hernández had the lowest single-game accuracy rate calling balls and strikes of any MLB umpire in the last 5 years (according to @UmpScorecards) and I'm not even kidding. pic.twitter.com/6WM2QvQvSh
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) September 15, 2023
That same site also tracks every single umpire in MLB, and who else but Hernandez has the worst accuracy percentage of all umpires at 91.9% this season? The next closest are Scott Barry (91.2%) and Laz Diaz (92.5%).
Of course, Hernandez has only called eight games this season. But when you're the worst at your job, maybe it's time commissioner Rob Manfred takes a look at your performance.
The 62-year-old Hernandez has famously and unsuccessfully sued MLB for racial discrimination because he hadn't been assigned to work the World Series since 2005. Games like this are the reason why, though. Let's hope we don't see Hernandez in the playoffs.
