No surprises here ...

[Frayed Knot]

ESPN.com (or ESPN the magazine, or ESPN the dessert topping I can't keep track anymore) conducted a survey of 100 ML players (50 NL & 50 AL - or about 13% of the league) about umpires.

The 'no surprise' part?
This: Worst: CB Bucknor (37%) - Joe West (35%) - Angel Hernandez (22%)
Unless you consider Angel Hernandez not being named on 107% of the ballots qualifying as a surprise.


http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5281467&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

[MFS62]

Frayed Knot wrote: ESPN.com (or ESPN the magazine, or ESPN the dessert topping I can't keep track anymore) conducted a survey of 100 ML players (50 NL & 50 AL - or about 13% of the league) about umpires. The 'no surprise' part? This: Worst: CB Bucknor (37%) - Joe West (35%) - Angel Hernandez (22%) Unless you consider Angel Hernandez not being named on 107% of the ballots qualifying as a surprise. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5281467&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

The first surprise was that Angel Hernandez' face wasn't the first thing I saw when I clicked on the link.
The second surprise was that some players left him off the "worst" list.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

If this was set up so that players were only allowed to vote for one 'worst' and not list several the fact that, out of more than 60 full-time umps, three guys garnered 94% of the vote is very telling about those three.

On a possibly not-related note, Selig has just put Frank Robinson in charge of the umpires (as well as several other things under whatever his new job description is) replacing Jimmy Lee Soloman who was "re-assigned" to different duties within MLB. I heard Buster Olney on the radio today talking about how things had gotten a bit lax and maybe a bit too chummy between the old boss and the umps and that there's no doubt that F-Robbie was brought in as "a leg-breaker".