Talking baseball: Vol. 3

Welcome to the ump show, but more importantly, welcome to the Jared Jones show

In some ways I do feel a little bad for Major League Baseball umpires. They are under a more intense microscope than ever before, and every single pitch is dissected to an absurd degree because of the K-zone that appears every broadcast and the strike zone that appears on the MLB and ESPN gamecast apps. If a pitch is just barely outside of that zone people lose their collective minds and start screaming for robot umpires, no matter how close it might be or how flawed those strike zones might be.

That is not to say the umpires are perfect or that there are not egregious misses that happen.

Sometimes in big situations.

Angel Hernandez kicked the shit out of a Wyatt Langford at-bat a few days ago and didn’t correctly a call a single pitch in the at-bat, and you didn’t need the K-zone to tell you they were bad.

I get the outrage over stuff like that.

But sometimes I just can’t muster up the anger so many others can over the borderline misses. I understand why they are not perfect with some of those calls. I can forgive a couple of borderline misses as long as you are mostly consistent with your strike zone.

What I do not have time for and what I will criticize is the umpire power trips and the situations where they make themselves a part of the story, seemingly going out of their way to call attention to themselves.

That brings us to the video you see above when home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt ejected New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone six pitches into Monday’s game against the Oakland A’s. Wendelstedt wasn’t happy that Boone said something about a check swing call, told him to shut up, and warned him that if he said anything else he would be gone. That is probably a bit of an overreaction given how little pushback Boone initially had, but whatever. It’s his show and 50,000 people are famously known to pack Yankee Stadium to watch Hunter Wendelstedt. Fine. Moving on.

But then just a few seconds later Wendelstedt was ejecting a confused Boone from the game.

Things really got weird when all of the camera angles showed that Boone didn’t actually say anything, and the comment that sent Wendelstedt over the edge actually came from some investment banker (I am guessing) sitting in the front row of the Legends Club.

When Boone pushed back that he didn’t say anything, Wendelstedt said he didn’t care.

Boone was rightfully pissed, and quite honestly, he probably should have been even more pissed than he actually was. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he George Brett’d that thing and emptied all of the dugout bats onto the field. He lost to an ump show that wanted to make himself feel powerful. The ejection itself was bad enough. It got even worse after the game when Wendelstedt doubled down on his decision, refused to admit his mistake, and almost became offended at the notion that he had mistakenly ejected a manager for something a fan had said.

"Apparently what he said was there was a fan right above the dugout. This isn’t my first ejection. In the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said," he continued. "I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying. I heard something come from the far end of the dugout, had nothing to do with his area but he’s the manager of the Yankees. So he’s the one that had to go.”

My brother, the game was televised. Cameras were rolling. They filmed everything. We all saw it. He went on to admit that Boone “probably” wasn’t the one that made the comment, but that he had to go anyway.

It is just the dumbest possible outcome and situation and nobody should be happy about, including Major League Baseball and the league’s other umpires who look terrible by association when things like this happen.

But the frustrating thing about it is …. none of them seem to care?

Wendelstedt was umpiring the second game of the series on Tuesday, and to this point Major League Baseball has not really said anything about it.

Boone said he spoke to the league and was satisfied with where things are and was ready to move on.

But I’m not!

When Aaron Boone does his job poorly, he gets fired. If he embarrasses an umpire, he gets ejected or potentially suspended if it is bad enough. When players do not perform, they get benched, demoted, traded, released, waived, etc.

The umpires seem to have no such accountability and have free reign to just pretty much do whatever they want for any reason they see fit. Even if it’s just all in their own minds.

I made this comment on Twitter during the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Tuesday night, but you, as a casual fan, should not know the name of an umpire, referee or official or who they are. You should not see their name for your team’s game and immediately think, “well, shit, not that freaking guy.” If you know who they are and know who is calling the game you are watching that is probably a really bad sign for the job those officials are doing. Out of sight, out of mind is the ideal here.

Anyway, enough about the ump show. Let’s talk about the Jared Jones show.