This weekend watching the Cubs and Rockies play, I saw a strange new mechanic. Angel Hernandez was behind the plate and whenever there was a check swing, and Angel called it, he would point at the batter with his left hand and then twirl his right hand around over his head like he was twirling a lasso. The first time I saw him do it I was just like "what the hell was that??" but then he did it about 4 more times throughout the game. Anyone else see this and what did you think of it??

That wasn't a cowboy manuever... he was ringing a bell... "Ring it up."

Sounds colorful.

There was no appeal here. Angel was the plate umpire, not the catcher, and was making the check swing call on his own. In the instances I mentionied, Angel was calling the strike on the batter without an appeal to the base umps.

I see this a lot.
 

This is not a stange mechanic, this is actually very common. The home plate umpire usually points at the batter when he knows himself he went on the swing. And usually it is accomidated with the PU yelling, "he went" or something to that affect. Basically it lets everyone know what happen so you are not asked a hundred times for an appeal or "what happen?"

Peace

Rut..

The pointing wasn't strange, I see that a lot and do it myslelf. The strange part to me was the lasso motion he made with his right hand as he was pointing to the batter. He didn't use this motion for anything other than the check swing so it wasn't his regular strike out sell. It looked like he was trying to throw a rope around the batter. That's what I thought was out of the ordinary.

Believe me, if you saw it, you would look twice.

I've seen Angel do that. I've always taken it to mean: "He Went!" (As in, he went around.)

The motion is appropriate to what happened, and while it may be unique to Angel, it doesn't appear out of place.