Angel Hernandez managed to avoid more embarrassing moments behind the plate Tuesday night in the MLB playoffs; in fact, he actually called a credible game
Like the New York Yankees, Angel Hernandez really needed to turn in a good MLB playoffs game Tuesday night. Unlike the Yankees, he basically did.
A 27-year major league umpire, Hernandez was roundly criticized for his work at first base during Monday’s third game of the Yankees-Red Sox American League Division Series. That work included having his safe/out calls overturned three times in a span of just a few moments.
For the series’ fourth game, Hernandez moved behind home plate, where the potential for mischief – in the form of missed ball or strike calls – loomed even more constant. Among major leaguers, that issue is critical because while the normal batting average in counts of less than two strikes is about .325, that norm plunges below .200 once an umpire rings up strike two.
Combine that with the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry and the fact that New York faced elimination from post-season play and it’s easy to understand why some looked upon Hernandez’ foray behind the plate with more than a small measure of concern.
For the most part, they needn’t have worried. He called 202 pitches during the evening, and according to Statcast got 189 of them – that’s 94 percent – correct.
While that sounds excellent, it’s actually only marginally above normal. Big league umpires routinely get about 92 percent of ball-strike calls correct, due in large measure to the fact that most of those calls are very easy. Of the 202 pitches he called, only 43 – that’s about one in five – were borderline in the sense of being within a ball’s width of the edge of the strike zone. Generally speaking, those close calls are the only ones a big league umpire ought to have any trouble with.
So how did Hernandez handle those borderline pitches? Again, the answer is a bit better than the norm. He correctly called 30 of the 43 close ones, 70 percent, a rate that is a hair above the 67 percent norm.
Hernandez may have been helped by the fact that the game lacked any pivotal moments requiring his intervention. The closest he came to dealing with such a pickle was when Yankee catcher Gary Sanchez ran the count to 3-2 with the bases full and one out in the 9th. Had Sanchez taken a borderline pitch at that moment, Hernandez would have been forced to decide between calling him out or sending him to first and forcing a run home in what at that moment was a 4-2 Red Sox lead. As it happened, Sanchez swung and lifted a sacrifice fly to left that made the score 4-3 before Sox relief ace Craig Kimbrel retired Gleyber Torres for the final out.
Perhaps obviously, Hernandez’s toughest inning was the bottom of the ninth, and – possibly to the surprise of many — he handled it flawlessly. Five times in that inning he was required to make calls on borderline pitches, and he got all five right, including two of the four balls that sent leadoff hitter Aaron Judge to first base. He also correctly called a close first pitch from Kimbrel to Giancarlo Stanton a strike, and accurately diagnosed the 2-0 and 3-0 balls thrown to Luke Voit.
The outcomes of only two at-bats appeared to be directly influenced by Hernandez’s misses, and neither appeared to be vital to the eventual final score. In the top of the first inning he wrongly called ball 2 on a 1-1 pitch, then wrongly called ball 3 on a 2-1 pitch, both from Yankee starter C.C. Sabathia to Xander Bogaerts. That Bogaerts at bat was easily Hernandez’ worst moment of the night, for he also mis-called a 1-0 pitch that was in the strike zone as a ball. Bogaerts eventually walked.
In the top of the 8th, Hernandez rang up strike three on Andrew Benintendi on a slider that Statcast showed to be off the plate outside.
For reasons cited above, mis-calls that unfairly either add or deny a second strike are especially sensitive. The Bogaerts first inning at bat provided one such moment, and a second occurred in the Red Sox half of the fifth. On a 2-1 count, J.D. Martinez took a sinker low in the strike zone that Martinez called a ball rather than strike 2. For the regular season, Martinez batted .193 in two-strike situations, but .295 with three balls on him, meaning that by that miss Hernandez swung the outcome probability by 100 percentage points. As it happened, Martinez grounded out short to first to take Hernandez off the hook.
In the bottom of the 5th, Hernandez mis-identified a changeup low in the strike zone as ball 2 rather than strike 3 to Aaron Hicks. But Hicks popped up a few seconds later. In the top of the 7th, Martinez took a 2-1 slider he correctly thought was inside, but which Hernandez called strike 2. Martinez eventually walked anyway.
When Hernandez missed a call, he tended to be tight. Of his 13 errors, nine were pitches in the strike zone that he called a ball; just four were balls he mis-identified as strikes. Nine of his mistakes nominally aided the Yankees; only four worked to the advantage of the Red Sox.
So, while Hernandez got plenty of grief and was even encouraged to no longer be allowed to umpire in the MLB playoffs by Yankees starter CC Sabathia, he actually called a decent game on Tuesday night.