Jon Miller on Minor League Umpires

[mattmets]

Originally Posted by Grail

My question is, why would MLB assign two minor league umpires to the same game? I realize that Drake logs as many or more MLB games as a full-time ump, but common sense says that you spread out the "part-timers" amongst several crews so that they have the "full-timers" to help them out.

Why does it matter? If MLB thinks you're qualified to work MLB games, you can do it no matter what. Are you saying if Tim Welke (or any other "full-timer") was at first base there's no way that situation happens? Piniella's a rat, always has been, and I'm sure Rob and Chad can both defend their actions well.