Tim Timmons is the Umpire Ejection Fantasy League's 2011 most improved umpire. In his 11th full Major League Baseball umpiring season, Timmons finished the 2011 season with two ejections after experiencing seven ejections last season. Timmons executed his first 2011 ejection in July, followed by an August 12 ejection of Carlos Zambrano for throwing at Atlanta's Chipper Jones.
Zambrano allegedly had grown frustrated and was accused of throwing at Jones without provokation, leaving a note on his locker announcing his retirement and leaving the stadium following the ejection. Timmons was unilaterally praised by many observers, including many UEFL'ers. One commenter wrote that Timmons "handled this situation better than any umpire I have seen in thirty years," while numerous UEFL'ers complimented Timmons for "preventing yet another MLB brawl."
Timmons worked his first career Championship Series this year, maintaining order during a Cardinals rout of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Tim Timmons now has 5 points in the Umpire Ejection Fantasy League (4 Previous + 1 Award = 5).
The next postseason award, Fill-In Umpire of the Year, will be released tomorrow.
great call...turning into a very strong young umpire after a somewhat rocky last few years and looking forward to watching him continue to pregress
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate to watch him call a series in KC this year (along with Jeff Kellogg and Eric Cooper, two other great umpires). Timmons was just flat out impressive. Great positioning with lots of hustle while still making it look easy.
ReplyDeleteTwo other great umpires.......I'll give you Kellogg, but Cooper looks like he swallowed a basketball. Every game I see him work the plate on tv, the players don't believe him. Can he work with anyone besides Reilly or Kellogg? Hats off to Timmons, who finally gets the recognition after several quality years.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know Timmons had a bad year last year? Maybe it's just that he's improved that much from where he was, which wasn't all that terrible to begin with. I know Bill Hohn won this award last year and HE was someone who came from the brink of mediocracy to win it. Timmons I think came from being somewhat good to becoming really great at umpiring
ReplyDeleteTimmons was pretty horrible last year. He had 7 ejections, some of wich were extremely unwarranted (Manny Acta and Ian Stewart as an example. He also just made some headscratching calls and was looked at as kind of a hothead. He defineately improved this year and was well deserving of this award.
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