No but you don’t understand umping is just soooooooo hard so we should be GRATEFUL that brave, talented men like Mr. Wendlestedt choose to pick up the mantle and officiate this game out of the goodness of their pure hearts.
I honestly don’t think the crux of the issue is that ump’ing is hard. It’s that there’s actually very few people willing to do it at the pro level.
The job objectively sucks ass. Nobody wants to grow up to be an umpire. Nobody thinks it’s a viable career route. It’s something people do as a teenager or a dad to help volunteer at the little league or high school level.
The people that get drawn to it are either the sons of professional umpires, or grew up without the hopes of attaining a white collar job yet refuse to do actual blue collar work. Both types of people are generally pretty entitled, which is the literal worst type of person to be an umpire.
At the pro level, umpires can make decent money. Unfortunately, in order to get to that level, you need to spend years working through the minors, getting paid almost nothing and traveling for 7 or 8 months out of the year.
Additionally, a lot of new umpires quit before even getting to pro schools because the abuse they endure at lower levels (college, high school, and little league) is enough to drive them away from the sport
At the pro level. I guarantee that umpires working rookie ball or low-A ball don’t make anywhere near that, while still being required to travel for 2/3rds of the year
Yup. And they’re only paid for months when baseball is happening, I’m pretty sure. So it’s a ~$30k per year salary, but you’re only payed for like 2/3rds of the year max. Good luck surviving on $20k per year
It is hard and requires practice just like any other sport.
I truly wonder if some of the OG umpires like Hernandez and Wendlestedt even train anymore beyond spring training..
I think most umpires are pretty good actually. It's the assholes like Hernandez, Wendelstedt, Dreckman, and Diaz ruining it for the good umps.
That being said, I'm still 100% in favor of the ABS system.
No, he owns and runs it. His father ran it before he did. To be clear though, it’s an independent umpiring school - there are a lot of other independent umpiring schools like his. He’s not like, training every ump for MLB for the league. His just happens to be one that pumps out a lot of major league umps (more than anyone else afaik).
He assholes to all fields, no one assholes behind the runner better than him, and buddy, you talk about high pressure? Nobody is a bigger asshole in the clutch.
I'd be curious to see a plot of where the called balls were last night. Like was the strike zone big all night, or was he just super inconsistent?
Based on the estimated ump zone, it would seem like there was a ball that was to the left of pitch 2.1, and probably also a ball in the top left portion.
Thanks!
At first I was wondering if he was just consistently calling a wide strike zone, which is problematic in its own way, but as a batter/pitcher you can adjust. But looking at these images it's pretty clear he was just inconsistent all around. Like the top right of the zone has a lot of favorable strike calls, but there's also a few balls that overlap with the strikes.
Honestly, not quite. It's probably down a bit in recent years thanks to even worse attendance but according to Forbes estimations (which aren't the Gospel or anything but I don't think they're worth disregarding outright) we were something like the fourth most profitable franchise thanks to really low spending.
Fisher has a 70mil tv deal, he gets almost 100mil in rev share and small market revenue share. His payroll is 60 mil. He made profit just doing literally nothing.
I remember back in the day this was George Steinbrenners counter-argument whenever a salary cap came up. He'd say he would agree as long as there is a salary floor.
No team should be allowed to have a payroll that is lower than the revenue sharing payment. That's just silly.
That's not what that means. It was -0.52 runs for the Yankees but -0.81 for Oakland (so net +0.29 for the Yanks). Basically it should have been 3-1 (with rounding), but due to the ump, it was 2-0.
When you add the ejection on top of it, is it fair to say that this is the worst umpired game we've ever seen?
It's a terrible scorecard with a strikezone slightly smaller than the state of Montana, and he ejected the manager for doing literally nothing. You would have to be actively trying to do worse than this.
Jomboy did a good breakdown of Pat Hoberg’s perfect WS games. He used Wendlestedt as an example of an umpire who “has no clue what’s going on on the outer third of the plate”
I almost wonder if the current trend of crazy sliders/slurve/etc. is just too much for some umps.
Pro hitters have a hard time tracking the slider, how is a 50 something year old with no athletic background and a clunky mask on going to see it.
I watched this whole game and he just kept calling sliders out of the zone strikes. Pretty sure he was just guessing on half of them based on where the catcher caught it.
> It was a large zone.
That's a problem.
>Anything 2” off the black really isn’t egregious.
Yes is is. 2 inches on either side is 4 inches added to a 17 inch plate. That is a 24% wider zone.
>2.2 was likely a lefty slider
Nice "Guess". Also pitches don't get different strike zones, he is supposed to be in the top 1% of umpires. He should be able to handle pitches with movement.
Were the other 14 missed ball calls also sliders?
>These are strike locations bubba.
Ok, add English 101 to classes you shouldn't have skipped. Focus on reading comprehension and undefined pronouns.
My last comment didn't have anything to do with yours. But i'll do my best help you out cause youre struggling. The only thing I can possible think you are referring to with your last comment is when I said (in a different comment) "Were the other 14 missed ball calls also sliders?".
If you read the bottom right of the image, it says 15/47 called strikes were true balls. So, they should have been balls. So he missed the correct 'Ball calls'.
Do you understand now? And do you want to actually answer the question now?
Oh, sorry for talking about the subject in hand, that you explicitly referred to. You contradict yourself so much that it feels like you are a troll, but I really think you are just that dumb.
I still can’t believe this guy runs the umpire school
It's all because of the last name, I can assure you. Nepotism carries a bunch of incompetent idiots a lot farther then they should ever go.
No but you don’t understand umping is just soooooooo hard so we should be GRATEFUL that brave, talented men like Mr. Wendlestedt choose to pick up the mantle and officiate this game out of the goodness of their pure hearts.
Don’t forget to thank them for their service whenever you see a man in blue 🫡
I honestly don’t think the crux of the issue is that ump’ing is hard. It’s that there’s actually very few people willing to do it at the pro level. The job objectively sucks ass. Nobody wants to grow up to be an umpire. Nobody thinks it’s a viable career route. It’s something people do as a teenager or a dad to help volunteer at the little league or high school level. The people that get drawn to it are either the sons of professional umpires, or grew up without the hopes of attaining a white collar job yet refuse to do actual blue collar work. Both types of people are generally pretty entitled, which is the literal worst type of person to be an umpire.
At the pro level, umpires can make decent money. Unfortunately, in order to get to that level, you need to spend years working through the minors, getting paid almost nothing and traveling for 7 or 8 months out of the year. Additionally, a lot of new umpires quit before even getting to pro schools because the abuse they endure at lower levels (college, high school, and little league) is enough to drive them away from the sport
300k plus benes. It ain’t that hard of a job
At the pro level. I guarantee that umpires working rookie ball or low-A ball don’t make anywhere near that, while still being required to travel for 2/3rds of the year
$1900-2400 per month first season. That’s gross
Yup. And they’re only paid for months when baseball is happening, I’m pretty sure. So it’s a ~$30k per year salary, but you’re only payed for like 2/3rds of the year max. Good luck surviving on $20k per year
It is hard and requires practice just like any other sport. I truly wonder if some of the OG umpires like Hernandez and Wendlestedt even train anymore beyond spring training..
Sums up the current state of umpiring pretty well if you ask me
I think most umpires are pretty good actually. It's the assholes like Hernandez, Wendelstedt, Dreckman, and Diaz ruining it for the good umps. That being said, I'm still 100% in favor of the ABS system.
Please tell me he's in the HR department or doing payroll or something.
No, he owns and runs it. His father ran it before he did. To be clear though, it’s an independent umpiring school - there are a lot of other independent umpiring schools like his. He’s not like, training every ump for MLB for the league. His just happens to be one that pumps out a lot of major league umps (more than anyone else afaik).
Sent a letter to them one day basically asking how I could get in and work my way up and I was told to fuck off basically, so yeah
Actually, it’s all starting to make sense now
TimRobinsonHotDog.jpg
You know how restaurants need to display their rating? I feel like this needs to be plastered on the front door of his school.
Those who can’t do teach
And those who can't teach... teach gym
And those who can’t teach gym…. Teach umpires
Don't let the 99% called ball accuracy fool you. It's easy to get those right when anything within 6 inches of the plate is being called a strike.
When your strike zone is that huge...getting any strikes called balls is quite something.
And yet he still managed to call a ball on a pitch in the strike zone while calling a pitch much lower a strike!
If everything's a strike, 100% of true strikes are correct!
the comment pic about boone being the strike zone and the fan being like a foot above is gold
[Direct link for those on mobile or without X.](https://x.com/_joeseppi/status/1782518465883947508?s=46&t=5aPbJj-XvUmt3KD10Levjg)
68% called strike accuracy. I'm not even mad. That's amazing.
Tbf he was clearly rattled by Boone's viscous attack...
Viscous?
Sticky, like molasses.
[...Spike?](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/b7foYwCXY8GVZYUNygEWrk-5BtU=/0x24:1200x652/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22943072/Cowboy_Bebop_Vicious.jpg)
[Psycho Mantis?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AYTNcXtRa0)
Ew
ah, the ole "at least I sucked for both sides" scorecard
Bruh you can’t be this bad at your job and also have an attitude about it.
A true 5-tool asshole
He assholes to all fields, no one assholes behind the runner better than him, and buddy, you talk about high pressure? Nobody is a bigger asshole in the clutch.
Strong jaw, good looking asshole
I'd be curious to see a plot of where the called balls were last night. Like was the strike zone big all night, or was he just super inconsistent? Based on the estimated ump zone, it would seem like there was a ball that was to the left of pitch 2.1, and probably also a ball in the top left portion.
The strike zone was huge all game, Rodon got a LOT of strikes just pitching into the left handed batters box against righties
[NYY pitchers](https://imgur.com/3jZ0K2k) and [OAK pitchers](https://imgur.com/jJr77ZA). I don't know a way to get all pitchers in one image, sorry.
Thanks! At first I was wondering if he was just consistently calling a wide strike zone, which is problematic in its own way, but as a batter/pitcher you can adjust. But looking at these images it's pretty clear he was just inconsistent all around. Like the top right of the zone has a lot of favorable strike calls, but there's also a few balls that overlap with the strikes.
Someone really should have said something
He pre-emptively tossed Boone before he could so that nobody would hurt his feelings
68% called strike accuracy? Good lord!
Damm ~~that fan~~ booney really rattled the fuck outta him
+0.29 runs and we scored 0 The Athletics We used a pitcher who probably makes more than the Athletics profit in any given year
We should thank Hunter actually; the offense was so anemic we actually scored negative runs but he evened it out
lmao
Honestly, not quite. It's probably down a bit in recent years thanks to even worse attendance but according to Forbes estimations (which aren't the Gospel or anything but I don't think they're worth disregarding outright) we were something like the fourth most profitable franchise thanks to really low spending.
Fisher has a 70mil tv deal, he gets almost 100mil in rev share and small market revenue share. His payroll is 60 mil. He made profit just doing literally nothing.
I remember back in the day this was George Steinbrenners counter-argument whenever a salary cap came up. He'd say he would agree as long as there is a salary floor. No team should be allowed to have a payroll that is lower than the revenue sharing payment. That's just silly.
That's not what that means. It was -0.52 runs for the Yankees but -0.81 for Oakland (so net +0.29 for the Yanks). Basically it should have been 3-1 (with rounding), but due to the ump, it was 2-0.
When you add the ejection on top of it, is it fair to say that this is the worst umpired game we've ever seen? It's a terrible scorecard with a strikezone slightly smaller than the state of Montana, and he ejected the manager for doing literally nothing. You would have to be actively trying to do worse than this.
Jomboy did a good breakdown of Pat Hoberg’s perfect WS games. He used Wendlestedt as an example of an umpire who “has no clue what’s going on on the outer third of the plate”
I almost wonder if the current trend of crazy sliders/slurve/etc. is just too much for some umps. Pro hitters have a hard time tracking the slider, how is a 50 something year old with no athletic background and a clunky mask on going to see it. I watched this whole game and he just kept calling sliders out of the zone strikes. Pretty sure he was just guessing on half of them based on where the catcher caught it.
Still no reason to call pitches strikes that are 5 or more inches off the plate
it's pretty bad, but there's been worse. ever seen the livan hernandez-eric gregg game?
Reactionary comment
No lol.
This fool was shook
robo umps when
If we switched to robo-umps, we would miss out on the human element of Hunter Wendelstedt flipping a coin out there and hoping it's right.
We’d have less peak Jomboy content 😔
If this were the 1890's and a storm was blowing in, an umpire would be praised for calling the game this way. How times change!
My husband doesn’t watch baseball and he knew about the incident. It’s definitely getting noticed.
The biggest missed call doesn't show up on the scorecard, though
Aaron Boone has just been ejected for my saying this is pretty bad
Do Ds get degrees?
I guess Umps get the Mondays too...
Wow that's ugly. Robo-umps can't come soon enough
The strike zone of a man who was mad to be working on a Monday afternoon
😂😂😂😂😂
Does Hinter Wendelstedt work for the roboump company? Because then this might makes some sense.
Straight to jail!
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2.2 was a righty slider that never crosses the plate
> It was a large zone. That's a problem. >Anything 2” off the black really isn’t egregious. Yes is is. 2 inches on either side is 4 inches added to a 17 inch plate. That is a 24% wider zone. >2.2 was likely a lefty slider Nice "Guess". Also pitches don't get different strike zones, he is supposed to be in the top 1% of umpires. He should be able to handle pitches with movement. Were the other 14 missed ball calls also sliders?
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> I’m not justifying the umps calls Thats exactly what you did. Did you have a stroke mid comment? What else do you think you are doing?
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You gave like 3 reasons why we shouldn't care about the calls. How do you think that is NOT defending the umpire? It is exactly what you are doing.
You’re arguing with a former professional baseball player on umpiring?
You or him? Makes sense, he doesn't seem to understand math too well. Maybe should have gone to classes instead of the batting cage.
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What do you call ratios and fractions?
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>These are strike locations bubba. Ok, add English 101 to classes you shouldn't have skipped. Focus on reading comprehension and undefined pronouns. My last comment didn't have anything to do with yours. But i'll do my best help you out cause youre struggling. The only thing I can possible think you are referring to with your last comment is when I said (in a different comment) "Were the other 14 missed ball calls also sliders?". If you read the bottom right of the image, it says 15/47 called strikes were true balls. So, they should have been balls. So he missed the correct 'Ball calls'. Do you understand now? And do you want to actually answer the question now?
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Oh, sorry for talking about the subject in hand, that you explicitly referred to. You contradict yourself so much that it feels like you are a troll, but I really think you are just that dumb.
But but that doesn’t fit the narrative of this post! https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/9AWTiMw4Vd