How Joe West, Angel Hernández would've compared to CB Bucknor in ABS era

Major League Baseball’s implementation of the automated ball-strike challenge system is arguably the second-greatest move involving umpires this decade. That, of course, depends on where you rank the retirements of both Joe West and Ángel Hernández.

If it sounds like we’re being too harsh on West and Hernández, the truth is that, if anything, we’re being generous. Both regularly ranked among the league’s worst umpires in terms of performance and attitude, with some players even publicly calling out their propensity for missing calls and antagonizing the stars that people actually pay to see. Fans and teams alike cheered when West called it quits after the 2021 season, and again when Hernández followed him in May 2024.

With how badly the two fared, especially during the back halves of their careers, maybe they should be glad they missed out on the ABS challenge system. Otherwise, they’d have officially proved what the sport had known for decades: The two struggled to make basic calls, let alone correctly call borderline pitches.

CB Bucknor is a reminder of what could have been if Joe West and Ángel Hernández still umpired

We’d hope that anyone who entered the season vehemently against the ABS system is rethinking their stance after CB Bucknor’s performance on Saturday afternoon. The Reds and Red Sox went a combined 6-of-8 in challenging Bucknor’s calls, and Cincinnati designated hitter Eugenio Suárez even won challenges on consecutive pitches in the sixth inning to spare himself not one but two erroneous strikeouts.

Umpire Scorecards found that Bucknor missed 26 taken pitches and finished with an 88% accuracy rating. For comparison, qualified umpires averaged roughly a 94.2% accuracy rate last season.

Approximately 80 umpires call at least 20 games behind the plate each year. Hernández’s final full season came in 2022, and Umpire Scorecards found that his 93.5% accuracy rating was still below league average. Bucknor led the league in the highest percentage of calls missed in 2022 and 2023.

Umpire Scorecards’ data goes back to 2015, and West ranked among the top-10 worst umpires five times over a seven-year span. Not even the ABS challenge system would have saved that trio from further embarrassment.

Joe West, Ángel Hernández, and CB Bucknor are further proof that ABS must eventually decide all pitches

Here’s all that you need to know about Joe West: He began his retirement by getting banned from Wikipedia for trying to edit the site’s biography about him — and, incredibly, he admitted to it.

Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia publicly questioned how Hernández was allowed to continue working postseason games after having three calls overturned during a 2018 ALDS game. Major League Baseball didn’t even bother fining Sabathia for those comments.

We need to reiterate that this is not as simple as disliking an umpire over perceived blown strike calls. Even if someone disputes the validity of Umpire Scorecards, we just saw teams challenge eight calls against Bucknor and succeed in six of those tries. In no world should that be allowed or considered acceptable.

With Major League Baseball and the players’ union needing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement in the coming months, let’s hope the two sides consider having the ABS system simply decide every pitch. The technology is there, and MLB measured all players during spring training to create an ideal, accurate strike zone. There is no reason we should excuse umpires like Bucknor or Hernández for blatantly and repeatedly missing obvious calls.

More MLB news and analysis:

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and more players who should already be banned from ABS challenges
• The Dodgers just pushed MLB closer to a lockout in the most unexpected way
• Who Royals, Giants, Pirates and White Sox fans are blaming for disappointing starts
• The MLB Opening weekend overreactions with a grain of truth to them