Dave Dombrowski has been a baseball executive long enough that he knows how to sidestep a question.
But even he couldn’t overextend himself too much in order to defend Angel Hernandez.
In what ultimately was a vintage night behind the plate for Hernandez, Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber blew a gasket on the umpire for a called third strike, which got him ejected. Hernandez, as umpire report cards after the game would prove, had a simply ghastly performance behind the plate that night, and the called third strike on Schwarber ultimately helped seal a 1-0 win for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Schwarber and Philly fans alike went scorched earth on Hernandez. And during an appearance on The Athletic Baseball Show” podcast this week, Dombrowski offered a candid, but largely diplomatic, take on the situation.
“It was not a good night behind the plate for the umpire, for Angel,” Dombrowski said (56:05 mark in the player above). “(I read in the paper that) they clearly missed nine calls against us, and seven calls against the Brewers. So, I mean, it’s pretty even. … The reality is probably if we scored the one run, you would’ve heard the Brewers complain rather than us. But the reality was it was bad from both ends of it.”
Dombrowski had admitted earlier in the interview that he was in favor of an automated strike zone, but that the system being tested out in the low minors needed refining first.
Using Sunday as the basis of comparison, though, it can’t possibly be any worse than Hernandez.
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