May Round Up!

Plus: Thoughts on Ángel Hernández

Ever since I started this newsletter, I’ve had a document sitting in my drafts titled, simply, “Ángel Hernández.” Sometimes the piece had a name like In Defense of Ángel Hernández or Ángel Hernández Shows the Power of a Union, but the truth is I never made much progress on it. My heart wasn’t in it, because I didn’t really want to align my cause with Ángel Hernández.

You see, everyone hates Ángel Hernández. There is an entire genre of YouTube clips in which players lose their mind over calls he’s blown. There’s this one from Kyle Schwarber a couple years ago, after Hernández called a Ball Four Strike Three. There’s this one from Bryce Harper last year, after Hernández said he swung on what was clearly a check swing. There’s this clip from CC Sabathia in 2018, saying Hernández is “absolutely terrible” and “shouldn’t be anywhere near a playoff game.” 

What’s funny about all these clips is that in each one, the player clearly crosses a line, getting too angry and too personal and too emotional, but every time the announcers and media side with the players because Angel Hernández’s call is so obviously wrong. You can’t really blame someone for getting angry when he’s clearly in the right. Just a month ago, Hernández might have put in his greatest performance, calling three of the most outside pitches you will ever see as strikes, all in a row:

It’s just hard to say anything positive about that. And yet Hernández had served as an umpire for over three decades before his abrupt retirement earlier this week. It is, in many ways, a testament to the power of unions, since the umpire’s union has kept the MLB from pushing him out before now. But I’m not sure I want to talk about that, because unions already have a reputation for keeping incompetent people in their jobs.

Of course, Hernández was never actually as bad as his reputation made it seem (he generally ranked between 60th and 70th in terms of umpire accuracy, out of between 85-90 umpires) and workers shouldn’t be fired based on their reputation and everyone deserves protections and yada yada yada all the standard caveats apply. But I’m just not sure I want people to associate with worker power with Ángel Hernández.

Anyway, here’s everything from the newsletter this month:

When I wrote this, I noted how impressively mediocre the Mets were to start their season. But since then the team has imploded, going 5-15 over three weeks and falling to six games behind the third Wild Card spot in the National League. More to the point, they’ve been plagued by a string of embarrassing stories, of the “lol Mets” variety, that seem to indicate their rich new owner has not, in fact, turned the culture of the team around.

---

It was recently reported that not only is Bronny James staying in next month’s draft, but he is only working out for two teams, the Lakers and the Suns, suggesting it is all but inevitable that he will play alongside his dad in Los Angeles.

---

In this piece, I dismissed the idea that this year’s Boston Celtics are a “superteam” since their biggest stars are homegrown… but they may be an all-time great team, if they win the Finals. Their regular season point differential is the same as the 2017 Warriors (+11.6 ppg), and their overall record going into the Finals (76-20) is close to the 2013 Heat (78-20).

---

RIP to a real one…