Larry Poncino

[Tim C]

I kinda/sorta tried a couple of threads earlier leading into this exact information.

"I hope that's not true. Rob Drake is a good dude, and has put 18 years of his life into becoming a top-notch professional umpire, and has gotten there. It's ridiculous that you can put that much into making this into a career and it ends like that. Flat out ridiculous. Even if Gucc gets the job, there is no reason for Drake to not keep getting used as the "fill-in." Personally I think they should just go ahead and hire him full time even if he's not officially on a crew because of how much he works."

"Any particular reason Rob is still working fairly important games if he's not coming back next year? Is it a "he's good enough to fill in but he's been here too long to not be hired" type thing? Not trying to be argumentative at all but I'm not following MLB's logic here."

These are two very good posts that start to touch on a system that maybe broken far beyond repair.

Baseball doesn't really care how many years a guy gives to this trade. Because of union agreements movement at the top is slight. Very few years (barring 1999) is there a great amount of movement.

Good people get released (or self release) each season. It is terrible in concept but it is the system. We all know that and so does every umpire that selects to enter this food chain.

Another point is that in certain ways MLB is cheap. MLB can have the highest quality AAA umpire work over 1,000 games and be paid at a lower rate. Economics rears its ugly head in strange places at times.

I also think Rob Drake is a great guy and a very good instructor.

But there is a strange "coincidence" occurring.

As you all know Rob had a great umpire website. As you all know MiLB or MLB umpires have restrictions in their contracts that they are supposed to be "internet free." Rob was violating that part of his contract.

When MiLB discover his website they forced him to close it down.

Now comes the "coincidence":

From the time the website was discover until today Rob's MLB evaluations have slowly eroded. Terms such as "game management issues" and "inconsistency of strike zone" have slipped into his evaluations.

I have no more information than any of you. I don't have the ties to MLB umpires (or the MLB offices) since Selig reorganized MLB.

All I know is that each year several very good umpires leave the trade.

We'll see what time shows us this year.

Regards,