Joe West, who has three decades of major league-umpiring experience, called out the Red Sox and Yankees for their slow pace of play in the season's opening three games.
"They're two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest?" West asked the Bergen Record. "It's pathetic and embarrassing. They take too long to play."
Oh. Well then.
The numbers support West's case, as each game of the series averaged around three hours, 38 minutes, but the crew chief for the series may have gone a little too far in his critique.
"All of baseball looks to these two clubs to pick up the pace. Angel [Hernandez] did everything he could," West said, referring to the Tuesday night home-plate umpire and his refusal to grant several timeouts, even as hitters stepped far out of the batter's box.
"The players aren't working with us. This is embarrassing — a disgrace to baseball."
If you asked some Red Sox on Sunday night — like, say, Mike Cameron in the third inning or Dustin Pedroia in the fourth — how they felt about some of the umpiring (particularly that of Hernandez), the words "pathetic" or "disgraceful" may have come out, too. Yet the players are forced to hold their tongues to avoid ejection, fines or other punishments. From the looks of things, it seems that umpires won't have the same set of rules applied to them.
