Angel Hernandez missed yet another call.
The veteran umpire lost his lawsuit against Major League Baseball on Wednesday, a U.S. District Court judge in New York ruled, per The Associated Press.
The veteran Cuban-born umpire had filed a suit against MLB in 2017, alleging racial discrimination as the reason why he had not been assigned to call the World Series since 2005 and continuously being passed over for crew chief.
“The court concludes that no reasonable juror could find that MLB’s stated explanation is a pretext for discriminatory motive,” U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken wrote on Wednesday.
The judge pointed toward umpire Alfonso Marquez, who was selected to work the World Series in 2011 and 2015, as evidence the league was not making discriminatory decisions.
Hernandez, who began umpiring in the majors in 1993, was also named an interim crew chief last year after other umpires opted out due to the pandemic.
Included in Hernandez’s suit was a claim that Chief Baseball Officer Joe Torre disliked Hernandez, dating back to 2001, and that Torre’s hostility also led to him bypassing the umpire for crew chief and World Series assignments despite Hernandez’s positive Field Evaluation Forms.
Oetken wrote that seniority and FEF ratings were just two of many factors in umpire promotions.
“In multiple seasons, Torre rejected white crew chief candidates who had more seniority than the white umpires he promoted,” Oetken wrote. “Hernandez’s handful of cherry-picked examples does not reliably establish any systemic effort on MLB’s part to artificially deflate Hernandez’s evaluations, much less an effort to do so in order to cover up discrimination.
“The evidence shows beyond genuine dispute that an umpire’s leadership and situation management carried the day in MLB’s promotion decisions.”
Oetken added that Torre’s denials for Hernandez were legitimate.
“The explicit reason MLB offers — that according to Torre, Hernandez ‘has not demonstrated the leadership ability and situation-management skills in critical high-pressure roles on a consistent basis’ — is presented in clear and specific terms.”
LISTEN NOW on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram