Does anybody have any idea on the crews for this year, and who works in the Grapefruit league, and who works in the Cactus league for spring training. Thanks.

The crews are usually not made available until mid to late March when they are posted on mlb.com or the WUA website. As far as who works the grapefruit and cactus league, that is relatively consistent. The same umpires usually work in Az or Florida year after year.

Very interestering to say the least. Maybe something Joe West personally received?

http://www.majorleagueumpires.com/umpire_crews.htm

This list will likely be revised as a few veterans may retire and Davidson, Hallion, and Hickox were rehired. The list itself seems plausible though since certain umpires have worked together for years - Brinkman/Cousins, Montague/Layne, Hirshbeck/Bell, and Welke, Cederstrom for example.

In addition to those, a few things I noticed.... Phil Cuzzi and Tim Welke got M. Hirschbeck and Rippley's numbers, respectively, (20 & 3), the Welke brothers are working together, and there seems to be a lot of umpires moving around....Tony Randazzo went from 2nd to 4th on the crew, Hunter Wendelstedt moved from 3 to 4, Eric Cooper, Paul Emmel, and Mark Wegner moved from 4 to 3....it seems that Dale Scott has the best crew IMHO this year....of course, this is all assuming none of these umpires retire before Opening Day....

[Edited by mattmets on Feb 26th, 2005 at 07:58 PM]

it is tough to pick the strongest crew. Besides Scott's crew, I also like Demuth's, Welke's and Reed's. Barrett and Marquez are two of the best young umpires in the game.

Apparently Ted and Alfonso are pretty close off the field through religion, so they will probably try to work together for a while. I think the way Alfonso handled that mess in the 2003 ALCS made a lot of people realize what an umpire he is.



In a related note, does anyone know who the new AAA guys are that will be working major league games?

Not exactly true, Randazzo was 3rd behind McClelland and Culbreth last year. Jim Wolf was named to the staff effective middle of April last year.

I wonder if anybody will retire before the season starts like Mark Hirschbeck did last year.

Mark retired due to an injury.....as many as 15 of these guys could take the retirement package.

Looked at the list today. Nice list, although like it has already been said this list will get revised as a few umpires have retired. Spring training games are just a few days away!

You wouldn't happen to know who some of these retiring umpires are, would you?

I think I saw somewhere that the umpires offered retirement have until April 15 to accept it, but I may be wrong. I have a feeling we're going to be waiting until opening day to officially see the crews, and even then some of them will probably change.

BTW- has anyone seen a lot of spring training games and could tell us any umpires they haven't seen?


goyanksgonj - on worldumpires.com there is a list of umpires who are working spring training games- the only new umpire with a number is Peter Durfee, who has Darren Spagnardi's #79. There are a couple of new names on there, but without numbers, which leads me to believe they will not be working MLB games this year.

How long ago did Rippley retire?

No- Spring Training umpires are usually not published anywhere. You won't find their names in the box scores, they don't say it on TV, and there is no roster or schedule of when and where they work.

Steve retired before last season. Dan Iassogna was hired to replace him.