Seems there is some discontent in the MLB umpiring ranks as well.....(from the NY Daily News)........
Umpires not making grade
CHICAGO - As they hold their collective breath that the World Series will play out free of any more controversial calls, MLB officials from the commissioner's office and the Players Association are looking into the grading circumstances that led to Joe West being named umpire crew chief while some of the game's most respected and seasoned umpires were left out.
According to two sources familiar with the process, the grading of umpires is left to the sole discretion of supervisor Frank Pulli, a former crew chief who is based in Tampa, where he receives all the Questec (balls and strikes) grading data from the ballparks. (It is said the Questec reports bear the most weight in the grading, but nobody apparently sees them except Pulli.)
"The grading is a joke," one source said. "It's all political, stemming from the mass resignation of the umpires a couple of years ago in which different camps got formed. Pulli is rewarding the guys who are in his camp and punishing the guys who aren't. How can Tim McClelland (one of the most highly regarded umpires for more than 25 years) not be in the World Series when Angel Hernandez is?"
A second source cited the selection of West, whose aggressive, showboating style prompted MLB officials to single him out as one the umpires who absolutely had to go as a condition for the hiring back of many of the 22 umps who had resigned in 1999. West's initial refusal to go held the deal up for two months, but then in 2002, he was hired back and made a regular-season crew chief by Pulli.
One of the game's most respected senior umps, Jerry Layne, is in the Series crew, but the sources said it is no accident this is his first World Series after 16 years on the job.
"He's not one of Pulli's guys," said one source, "but if I were the chiefs from MLB I'd make sure to take Layne aside and tell him to keep West in line. Everybody respects Layne - and West, left unchecked, is scary."
Then there's the case of Bruce Froemming who, with 36 years of service, is the senior major league umpire but was not given any postseason assignments. "You can say what you want about Bruce's weight and some of the dumb things he's said on occasion," said one source, "but he does a decent job and won't ever freeze up. But Pulli kept him out of the All-Star Game in Milwaukee, where he lives, just to spite him three years ago."
According to other sources, Richie Garcia, one of Pulli's supervisor lieutenants, was assigned to a Red Sox-Yankees series in Boston that year and gave Froemming eight unsatisfactory grades. It was then reported that Froemming's good ratings were shredded by Ralph Nelson, the former umpires chief supervisor who was subsequently fired.
Another respected ump, 15-year veteran Mike Winters, was left off the postseason assignment list after getting into a heated argument with Steve Palermo, another Pulli lieutenant, over a particular pitcher's perceived illegal move. According to the source, the incident took place in August and Winters incurred Palermo's wrath by refusing to call the pitcher out on it four months into the season while telling him the situation should be straightened out in spring training.
In March 2002, the Daily News reported that at the height of the Pete Rose gambling investigation in 1989, umpires Pulli and Garcia were found to have been associating with known gamblers and bookmakers. However, then-commissioner Fay Vincent covered up the investigation and merely placed the umps on probation. Sandy Alderson, as VP of operations for baseball in charge of the umpires, then hired Pulli and Garcia to be supervisors after they were forced to retire in the aftermath of the '99 mass resignation purge.
"They made mistakes," Alderson was quoted as saying, "but from my standpoint there is no question of their integrity and commitment to the game or to the profession of umpiring."
One suspects many of the senior and most highly respected umpires might not agree with that assessment.
