Ángel Hernández may have retired, but Hunter Wendelstedt apparently took that as an invitation to compete for his old title. Sunday’s performance showed that while Hernández is gone, MLB’s umpiring controversies are very much alive. If nine overturned calls and 20 missed pitches are any indication, Wendelstedt did more than enough to keep Hernández’s legacy alive.
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“Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt (ranked 81st of 91 umpires this season) called the worst game of the day and the 16th worst this season,” observed Umpire Auditor on X.
“He missed 20 calls in the Yankees-Blue Jays game and had 9 calls overturned. Only 4 games this season had 9+ calls overturned, and Wendelstedt was responsible for two of them.”
Wendelstedt was brutal behind the plate, and the numbers made it impossible to hide. It started from the first inning itself.
Trent Grisham was on the plate for the Yankees, facing a 1-1 count. Blue Jays pitcher Dylan Cease dropped a curveball. Then, Wendelstadt ruled Grisham out, even though it was only strike two. After Grisham’s surprising look, the ump understood his mistake and corrected the count. But later, Grisham was struck out swinging anyway.
Even though that pitch was not even a strike, Grisham didn’t challenge the call because he had already lost one challenge. We will get to that in detail in the later half of this article.
Altogether, this was recorded as the worst umpiring so far in the season. He missed 20 calls and got overturned nine times among 11 challenges, basically turning the strike zone into a guessing game for both teams. The top 3 impactful missed calls were:
- Top of the 2nd: Dylan Cease to George Lombard Jr., with 1 out and bases empty on a 2-0 count. The ump called the ball a strike.
- Bottom of the 6th: Ryan Weathers to Alejandro Kirk, with 1 out, and runners on first and third base on a 3-0 count. The ump called the ball a strike.
- Bottom of the 10th: Tim Hill to Nathan Lukes, with 1 out, and runners on first base on a 1-0 count. The ump called the strike a ball.
Seeing that Umpire Scorecards, one fan even pointed out that strike call on Kirk should’ve cost the Blue Jays one or two runs. But he swung in the next pitch from the same spot, and it turned into an inning-ending double play.
And this was not some one-off disaster either.
Only four MLB games all season have had nine or more calls overturned, and Wendelstedt was responsible for two. For a second-generation MLB umpire who now owns an umpire training school, that is not just embarrassing. At this point, it raises some serious questions.
The nine reversals were not buried in one bad inning. They were scattered throughout the game;
- 2nd: Lombard Jr., strike overturned to ball
- 3rd: Caballero, strike overturned to ball
- 3rd: Caballero again, strike overturned to ball
- 6th: García Jr., strike overturned to ball
- 6th: Kirk, strike overturned to ball
- 8th: Grisham, ball overturned to strike
- 8th: Cameron, strike overturned to ball
- 10th: Bateman, strike overturned to ball
- 10th: Bateman again, ball overturned to strike
By the time the game reached extra innings, both teams had spent the afternoon asking technology to clean up his mistakes.
On Sunday, Wendelstedt was behind the plate for the Yankees-Blue Jays series finale at Rogers Center, which New York won 4-3 in extra innings. Wendelstedt judged 167 pitches and finished with a dismal 88.02% accuracy – 5.2% below the expected accuracy. That’s 8.8 fewer correct calls than an average umpire. The Yankees and Blue Jays combined to overturn nine of his calls through ABS. And it was not even his first nine-reversal game of the season.
Back in April, Wendelstedt had another nine calls overturned during the Padres-Rockies series. Even then, he missed a total of 18 calls.
Just two days after the April disaster, Wendelstedt appeared in an interview and admitted he was still learning ABS:
“I’m learning the system just like everybody else and the strike zone,” Wendelstedt told Forbes.
But the experience shouldn’t be a question.
Wendelstedt has been umpiring since 1998. Plus, major league umpiring runs in his blood because his father, Harry Hunter Wendelstedt Jr., was at the job from 1966 to 1998. But the son probably just lost track of the counts. Wendelstedt started missing calls early and never settled in.
George Lombard Jr. challenged one in the second inning and got it overturned. Alejandro Kirk did the same in the sixth, and Wendelstedt was overturned again, and the saga of missed calls went on.
In the bottom of the tenth, with the Yankees clinging to a one-run lead, he called a strike a ball with one out. This time, New York had to live with it. Tim Hill still finished the job, securing the 4-3 win and preventing a sweep.
And it was nothing new for the Yankees, who had seen Wendelstedt controversy firsthand before.
In 2024, he ejected Aaron Boone just five pitches into a game over a comment that actually came from a fan behind the dugout. Video showed Boone had not said it, but Wendelstedt still stood by the ejection, saying the manager was “responsible for everything that happens in that dugout.”
However, Hunter is not the only umpire getting exposed by ABS, even though right now, he is making the loudest case for himself.
C.B. Bucknor has an even stronger claim to baseball’s worst-umpire label, with UmpScorecards ranking him as MLB’s least accurate umpire over the last five years. Early in 2026, six of eight ABS challenges against Bucknor were overturned in one game, while his season overturn rate sat at 78 percent. Laz Díaz has also been near the bottom of the accuracy rankings, and Chad Whitson had all seven challenges against him overturned in one March game.
As baffling as the veteran umpire’s 2024 stance was, there was one particular call on Sunday that baffled everyone more than anything else.
Hunter Wendelstedt’s most embarrassing call of the day
The tone of Wendelstedt’s umpiring was set early on Sunday, when he made perhaps one of the most embarrassing mistakes.
In the top of the first, Trent Grisham was batting with two outs and facing a 1-1 count from Dylan Cease. The Blue Jays pitcher had a curveball ready for Grisham. It was a clean strike, and Wendelstedt knew it. The problem was not the strike zone this time; it lay elsewhere.
Instead of ruling it strike two, the home plate umpire went straight into his punch-out routine. Grisham was left bewildered, and Wendelstedt quickly realized the mistake and corrected himself. Cease struck Grisham out on the next pitch anyway, but the damage to Wendelstedt’s afternoon was already piling up.
The reaction around MLB was brutal.
Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay summed up the afternoon with a sarcastic, “Have a day, Hunter,” while The Sporting News called Wendelstedt’s performance “shockingly bad.”
Umpire Auditor was even harsher, grading it as the worst-called game of the day and the 16th-worst of the season after 20 missed calls and nine ABS reversals. At that point, there was no defending it, while fans mocked him, saying it was Ángel Hernández’s spirit and asking him to retire or go to umpiring school. Some even thought that he wouldn’t even be an ump had it not been for his father, who officiated five World Series and four All-Star Games.
Even MLB’s official Yankees recap could not completely avoid the ABS chaos, noting that José Caballero’s third-inning walk was aided by two successful challenges in the same plate appearance.
By the end of the afternoon, Hunter Wendelstedt had gone from simply calling the game to becoming one of its biggest talking points.