Event before Colorado Rockies game highlights umpire goodwill, tensions

At least by the Commissioner’s office and MLB’s chief baseball officer, Joe Torre, who determines which umpires have postseason assignments, Guccione is viewed as one of the best umpires in baseball as he has had a postseason field assignment in each year that he has been eligible.

After his “rookie” season (even though he already had a MLB record 1,255 games as a Triple-A fill-in umpire), he was eligible for postseason in 2010 and since, he has worked three Wild Card Games (2012, 2017-2018, the latter two of which the Rockies played in), six LDS’s (2010-2011, 2013-2016), three LCS’s (2012, 2017-18), and one World Series in 2016 (umpires cannot work back-to-back World Series and rarely work two World Series in three years (the last one was Jeff Kellogg in 2008 and 2010)).

The only umpires who have longer active streak of seasons with postseason field assignments than Guccione have both been MLB umpires longer than him (Ted Barrett since 2005 and Bill Miller since 2008 and both have became full-time umpires as a part of the aforementioned hires after the ’99 umpire mass resignation).

With all of the umpiring that Guccione has done (coming up on 2,600 games in the major leagues including games this season, the minor leagues, and games as a kid), he said that he has never seen a situation like the situation that Cordova had to deal with.

However, fan backlash is something that can be a problem for umpires.

"“The attacks [towards umpires] have always been there…” says Guccione. “…[B]ut with technology [in the Majors]–and the game has changed in that aspect because we have super slow motion cameras and we have the replay system now–in the end, we do get the calls right, which is important.”"