MLB Umpire Angel Hernandez Is Already Getting Roasted For Being Terrible In The First Inning Of The 2021 Season

Major League Baseball is back and so is Angel Hernandez. As Spring Training games got underway across Florida and Arizona, this weekend saw the first live-action pitch since the sixth game of the World Series on October 27, 2020. With the return of America’s favorite pastime came the return of America’s least favorite umpire. Hernandez picked up right where he left off and was back to making terrible calls behind the plate during Sunday’s game between the Nationals and the Cardinals. He was trending nationwide on Twitter within minutes of the first pitch.

It’s not often that an umpire is a household name. I’d venture to guess that the majority of baseball fans wouldn’t be able to name more than two. If that. But we all know Angel Hernandez. Notorious for being one of the worst umpires in the game, here are just a few examples of why his reputation is so poor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1NcRwKM7Q8

As the 59-year-old began his 30th season as an umpire, it didn’t take long for him to get back to his old ways. It wasn’t even the bottom of the first inning before he was calling balls as strikes and strikes as balls.

Things got so bad so fast that even the Cardinals’ play-by-play announcer Dan McLaughlin joked at Hernandez’s expense.

While that specific pitch may have actually landed low and Yadier Molina just did a great job framing the ball, the bad calls were not limited to those two instances.

https://twitter.com/wilkystl/status/1366108785568329739

Hernandez is objectively one of the worst, if not the worst umpire in the league and he is already off to a poor start in 2021. If you explained the situation to anyone who was unfamiliar with the game, they might ask “why doesn’t the MLB just remove him?” and that would be a fair question.