Major League Baseball (MLB) umpire Angel Hernandez is claiming significant allegations right now within the league. According to Hernandez’s Lawyers, Major League Baseball manipulated minority umpires by altering its internal evaluations to not give them opportunities to be crew chiefs, per The Athletic’s Daniel Kaplan.
Hernandez’s lawyers made the claim in a filing Tuesday to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is an attempt to overturn the summary judgment U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken granted to MLB in March 2021. In 1993 Angel Hernandez was hired into the MLB as an umpire. He sued in 2017, alleging he was discriminated against. Consequently, Hernandez sited two specific instances; he had not been assigned to the World Series since 2005, and had been passed over for crew chief.
Angel Hernandez’s Specific Allegations:
Citing the 2011-16 seasons, Hernandez’s attorneys said in the brief to the appellate court that “MLB manipulated Mr. Hernandez’s year-end evaluations in order to make his job performance appear worse than it actually was. Mr. Hernandez’s year-end evaluations for the 2011-2016 seasons do not even come close to accurately summarizing Mr. Hernandez’s actual performance in those seasons.”
In an August 2020 brief responding to a similar allegation, MLB called the claim “devoid of merit.”
Hernandez’s lawyers wrote “the District Court failed to follow existent precedent applicable to discrimination cases in which the pool of minority individuals eligible for promotion is too small to yield a statistically significant conclusion as to disparate impact.”
Hernandez’s Judgement Has Been Called Into Question Before:
Angel Hernandez has been ranked as “the worst umpire in MLB.” To Quote David Hill of Call to Pen:
“You know you are terrible at your job when that is determined in the legal system. Such is the case with Angel Hernandez.
Hernandez had his discrimination suit against MLB thrown out due to his general ineptitude on the diamond. He had claimed that he was passed over as a crew chief and for postseason assignments based on his race and a feud with Joe Torre, when he was really passed over due to the fact that he is horrendous at his job.
There are far too many instances to recount all of them. That is to say, he is horrendous in every aspect behind the plate. A prime example of his inability to call a game correctly came in Game Three of the 2018 ALDS, where four of his calls were challenged in the first four innings. Consequently, three of those four being overturned. How he is still allowed on the diamond is a mystery to everyone involved.”
All in all, one has to consider that Hernandez may not be good at his job. It is also important to realize that you cannot take these types of allegations lightly and a full investigation will presumably follow.
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