![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lazdiaz_lol.jpg\")
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Larry Brown Sports<\/a>: seven ancient-tenured MLB umpires accept buyouts from the league to retire early, including notoriously oft-questioned umpire, CB Bucknor<\/span><\/p>\n Make absolutely no mistake, this story is probably 95% on account of the fact that the automated ball and strike system has nuclear-power kicked open the door of exposing umpire ineptitude, with the other 5% being that there\u2019s an extremely high chance that the entire league is going on strike after the 2026 season and that there will be no or a shortened 2027 season on the near horizon, and Beaner wanted to give their old boys club a chance to get out ahead of time.<\/span><\/p>\n But really, this has almost entirely to do with the fact that the ABS system has wreaked havoc on the umpire fraternity, and this seems like the safest way to get many of the most exposed umpires out the door with the most minimal amount of further humiliation at how bad they are at their jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n I know it\u2019s been a divisive topic among baseball fans, with lots of old school old heads not liking the advancement of change, and that old school part of me can understand it, but I\u2019ve been a sports fan long enough to know the frustration and aggravation of missed officiating ruining and tarnishing games, so even if it means that there\u2019s a chance that it goes against the outcoming I\u2019m hoping for, I\u2019m generally accepting of the fact that this newer system of accountability is in place, in the event it helps the probabilities that I\u2019m hoping for.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s not sugar coat it, baseball umpiring has been among the worst when it comes to league oversight.\u00a0 No other major American sport, do fans know the names and faces of officiating crews more than they do in baseball, primarily for reasons of disdain, dislike and hatred.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take me long at all to learn who Tim McClelland, Joe West and Angel Hernandez were in the past of notorious umpires, and it took me no time at all to understand the significance of CB Bucknor headlining the latest list of umpires getting pushed out the door.<\/span><\/p>\n And not to go unnoticed is Laz Diaz, whom despite not being the headlining name, was very clearly listed second in the list of umpires sent packing.\u00a0 Whether it was intentional or not, smart of him to sneak in underneath CB, so that some of his heat is mitigated by a worse umpire.\u00a0 But make no mistake, I\u2019m about as pleased to see Laz getting the boot as much as Bucknor is, because he too, fucking blows.<\/span><\/p>\n I digress though, when change this large crashes over, it sometimes turns into those scenarios where we might not like the devil we don\u2019t know that\u2019s looming ahead of us, versus the devils we just sent out to pasture.\u00a0 I still believe that there\u2019s an extremely low chance that there\u2019s even a baseball season in 2027, given the MLB Owners basically speed-running the inevitability of a work stoppage<\/a>, with their list of demands that the players will more than likely absolutely not agree to, but regardless of what happens when baseball is back on the field after the 2026 season, as far as the umpiring goes, it\u2019s probably going to be, one of baseball\u2019s favorite cliches, a brave new world.<\/span><\/p>\n But at least it will be one where umpire culture is getting something of a hard-reset and hoping that we the fans (and those like me who pretend to be them) won\u2019t ironically know and react to the names of every umpire that is slated for the games we want to watch.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Larry Brown Sports: seven ancient-tenured MLB umpires accept buyouts from the league to retire early, including notoriously oft-questioned umpire, CB Bucknor Make absolutely no mistake, this story is probably 95% on account of the fact that the automated ball and strike system has nuclear-power kicked open the door of exposing umpire ineptitude, with the other … Continue reading ABS is the gift that keeps on giving MLB<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,79,45,191,205,83,133,52,58,25,190,49],"class_list":["post-51321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-cashmoney","tag-fail","tag-greed","tag-mlb","tag-observations","tag-old-man","tag-owned","tag-sports","tag-technology","tag-white-people","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51323,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51321\/revisions\/51323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}