The incident last night between umpire and Realmuto brought a lot of things to light. Should the umpire be suspended for the "soft ejection." In case you've been in a cave last 24 hours.
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He should absolutely be suspended IMO. The Ump Show is being highlighted by the way they are enforcing new rule changes. But it’s a catch 22. They can’t get enough good, qualified young umpires because of the amount of abuse that’s thrown their way. And this is the case from LL to MLB. So at every level they have to take who they can get and the game is suffering because of it. Common sense seems to be a thing of the past.
When Realmuto pulled his glove away a rational response from the umpire would have been, “What are you doing? “ Realuto’s response would have ended the problem. He thought the pitcher already had a ball.
What a joke. He is a fill in who obviously can't handle what's going on with these new pitch clock violations.
Realmuto has never been ejected. He is a future hall of famer.
But I don't think the umpire should be ejected, but needs a sit down with who he reports to on procedure.
JMO
Suspend without pay, and sit down with his supervisor to go over umpiring mechanics. This could have easily been avoided with a cooler head and some freaking common sense.
As always, JMO.
"They can’t get enough good, qualified young umpires because of the amount of abuse that’s thrown their way. And this is the case from LL to MLB. "
It is a vicious circle. They get abuse because they are bad, they are bad because the abuse drives away the good ones. Many umps do not help themselves either. They don't put an end to the chirping early in the game. If you get a coach who wants to be the next Earl Weaver, a simple "Coach - I hear you, but if you keep that up, you will be watching the game from the parking lot" goes a long way. In 10+ years of doing mostly youth ball I have only had 3 ejections. One parent, one coach, one 10yo kid (trucked the catcher). The coach was in a Cal Ripken district tourny and when I reported it to the director, I found out that they have had complaints about the coach previously in the tourny. Because the actions wer not addressed when they first appeared, they grew worse.
Not enough time is spent during the training to teach the de-escalation needed in the job.
There is also the real issue ... $. I het $40 for a youth game 46/60 $50 for 50/70. The game goes 2 hours, prep time and travel time... say 3 hours all in. Thats about $13 per hour. I could earn more than that with benefits working at Starbucks or Dunkin.
Other sports are also stealing the talent. Lacrosse gets $65 for a 1 hour time limit game.
I don't think there is a good solution to the shortage of officials. There are a lot of forces at play.
I agree NewUmpire. People ask me why I don't get back in it since my son is now in college and I could call all during the week. My answer is I can do lessons and charge a meager $20 per 30 minute session which is very cheap these days which is also $40 per hour and no one hollers at me. I'm inside. They are coming to me and I turn down 20 kids per week because of time constraints and having a real job. Why would I go back to umpiring in today's culture? I make what a college umpire makes when you take into account full per hour spent on getting there, pre-game, game, after game evaluation, meal, driving back home, and washing clothes and getting ready for next game. That was normally about 8 hours for me every game I called unless it was really local or I was a fill-in and got there late. That is $320 if I did 8 hours of lessons. And again, no one hollering at me except my wife.
to my original question. I do not think he will be suspended but I do think it will hurt his chances of moving up this year or getting more games. It was a simple talk or read the room situation. The bad part is that it has been blown out of proportion because it was so wild. So many memes and clips of it being shown in the baseball community. I think they will have a long talk with him. You are not a 20 year guy and be smart enough to know who you are throwing out. He is the nicest guy there is. Use that head for something other than holding up your facemask. I almost feel bad for the guy but he did it to himself. I know when he watched it he was like stupid, stupid, stupid. I also felt sorry for his partners who had to try to take up for him. I'm sure they gave him a fit when the game was over. Been there, done that.