‘Social media firestorm’ led to umpire Angel Hernandez’s sudden MLB retirement
“I think everyone involved recognized in the end this ultimately will be a better thing for him and the league too.”
nypost.com
By Matt Ehalt
Congratulations, baseball fans on social media.
You helped pave the way for Angel Hernandez to retire and mercifully end his reign of brutal calls.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan said the constant social media backlash — which he said he contributed to — played a role in Hernandez ending his career after 33 seasons.
“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,” Passan said on the “Rich Eisen Show” on Tuesday. “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, the last time, and it would bring up the Angel Hernandez highlight reel. You just had this echo chamber of Angel Hernández awfulness that, I think, in the end, wound up being part of his undoing.”
Hernandez started his career in 1991, a much-different era than 2024 where every single pitch and blown call can be seen by millions within a span of one minute.
Umpires like Hernandez found all of their blown calls scrutinized and highlighted, and with Hernandez there were plenty of “How did he miss that?” moments.
Many had wondered how long MLB would allow Hernandez to keep ruining games, with Eisen noting how it seemed players had lost respect for Hernandez and that Hernandez’s brashness made it seem as if he never thought he made a mistake.
“I think it was just that we expect a certain level of competence from our officials,” Passan said. “And when that level of competence is not reached, and when that compact between the league and its fans that we’re going to give you competent enough umpiring, refereeing, whatever it is, when that compact is breached, as frequently as it seemed to be with Angel Hernández, that’s where the league, frankly, needed to step in and do something.
“And in this case it was say, ‘Hey, we’re going to offer you a handsome retirement package, so you stop being one of the main characters in our daily program.’ Because that’s what he was. He had become like the villain who comes back every so often when you least expect it. It’s like, ‘Oh, boy, Angel’s trending again. We got an Angel day today. What’d he do this time?’ As opposed to, ‘Oh, boy, we’ve got a big home run from Shohei Ohtani.’ Or, ‘Oh, boy, the Cleveland Guardians are playing amazing baseball this year.’
“No, it always went back to Angel. And it’s like we had fallen as baseball-viewing fans into this almost habit of waiting for an Angel day to happen because it was inevitable.”
MLB reportedly approached Hernandez earlier this year about retiring, although Hernandez’s lawyer told The Athletic that “He was NOT forced out”
Passan labeled it as a “meeting in the middle, a mutual understanding” between the parties.
“Everybody recognized that, ‘OK, it ain’t working,'” Passan said.
Passan did offer some nice words about Hernandez, saying that “90-plus” percent, he was “really good.”
But that 10 percent outweighed the majority.
“But good as an umpire is not good enough,” Passan said. “You have to be great. You have to be spectacular. 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. There was just so much baggage there with Angel Hernández that I think everyone involved recognized in the end this ultimately will be a better thing for him and the league too.”
