Despite missing half of the season due to an injury, Angel Hernandez returned to umpiring and he is already in midseason form.
The 61-year-old MLB ump with a long list of incidents and missed calls and a lawsuit against the league alleging racial discrimination was behind home plate at Nationals Park on Wednesday and made several errors on pitches down in the zone that hurt the Nats.
And the broadcast on MASN was quite displeased with Hernandez's performance, including when he missed a 1-1 pitch in the strike zone to Tyrone Taylor, who hit a 396-foot home run to right field on the next offering from MacKenzie Gore.
Gore asked Hernandez where the pitch missed and the umpire could be seen pointing down seemingly suggesting the strike was actually low. That was a theme that continued for the rest of the game.
The Nats would go on to win 3-2 thanks to a pair of runs in the bottom of the ninth.
On the day, the veteran umpire missed nine calls out of 133 pitches (93 percent accuracy) with eight called balls that should have been called strikes at the bottom of the zone. Hernandez was 1.4 percent below expected, per Ump Scorecards on Twitter.
In a rehab assignment from a Triple-A game between the Durham Bulls and Charlotte Knights, he was also all over the place with the strike zone.
Earlier in the series, Hernandez embarrassingly missed an obvious out call on a steal attempt when umpiring at second base, a call that was overturned on replay review.
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