Yankees' Aaron Boone: Ángel Hernández Was 'Unfairly' the Face of Bad MLB Umpires

New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone thought outgoing MLB umpire Ángel Hernández got a bit of a raw deal relative to how he was perceived compared to his peers.

Boone said on Talkin' Baseball that Hernández is "unfairly the poster child or the face of bad umpiring."

USA Today's Bob Nightengale reported Monday that Hernández is retiring, news that sparked an overwhelmingly one-sided reaction on social media.

How the 62-year-old was described spoke volumes about the reputation he built for himself. Nightengale called him a "polarizing veteran umpire who has drawn the wrath and exasperation from players, managers and fans alike over three decades." ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote that "particularly after the retirement of Joe West before the 2022 season, Hernández became the face of umpiring," for good and bad.

Prior to news of his retirement, The Athletic's Sam Blum and Cody Stavenhagen profiled Hernández and concluded "the truth lies somewhere in between."

Dylan Yep, who started Umpire Auditor, summed it up well by telling Blum and Stavenhagen, "It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy" with the veteran ump.

"When he does make a mistake, everyone is immediately tweeting about it," Yep said. "Everybody is tagging me. If I'm not tweeting something about it, there are a dozen other baseball accounts that will.

"Every single thing he does is scrutinized and then spread across the internet in a matter of 30 seconds."

Based on Umpire Auditor's data, Hernández consistently ranked in the 60-70 range out of the 85 to 90 umpires who worked in a given year, and that backs up Boone's point.

Hernández may not have excelled at his job, but he was far from the only one consistently missing calls. And there are probably some who are worse than he is yet haven't become the avatar for wider issues in the way he did.

The torch will almost assuredly just get passed to someone else and the entire cycle starts anew.