Five new umpires will be working their first full season as Major League crew members in 2025.
MLB announced the promotion of Paul Clemons, Emil Jiménez and Alex MacKay to the full-time Major League staff on Friday. They’ll join Dan Merzel and Nate Tomlinson, who were promoted during the 2024 season and will also be entering their first Spring Training and Opening Day as full-time MLB umps.
Come Opening Day, there will also be three new MLB umpiring crew chiefs. Vic Carapazza, Doug Eddings and Andy Fletcher have all been named crew chiefs for the 2025 season. Eddings has been a Major League umpire for 26 years, Fletcher for 25 1/2 years and Carapazza for 14 years.
Those three will replace the three MLB crew chiefs who retired at the end of 2024: Paul Emmel, Jerry Layne and Larry Vanover. Layne was MLB’s senior-most umpire, with 36 years of Major League service. Vanover was a Major League umpire for 32 years, and Emmel for more than 25 years.
As for the new umpires — Clemons will join Adrian Johnson’s crew for the 2025 season, Jiménez will join Doug Eddings’ crew, and MacKay will join Alan Porter’s crew. Merzel will be part of Mark Carlson’s crew, and Tomlinson will be part of Mark Wegner’s crew.
All five have worked plenty of MLB games before their appointment to the full-time umpiring roster. Clemons worked 249 Major League games as a call-up umpire before his promotion, Jiménez worked 246 games, MacKay worked 262 games, Merzel worked 452 games and Tomlinson worked 303 games.
Clemons began working Major League assignments in 2020, Jiménez in 2023, MacKay in 2020, Merzel in 2017 and Tomlinson in 2020.
MLB also announced Friday that 21 additional umpires have been selected to work 2025 Major League Spring Training: David Arrieta, John Bacon, Brock Ballou, Darius Ghani, Macon Hammond, Tom Hanahan, Steven Jaschinski, James Jean, Edwin Jiménez — Emil’s brother — Austin Jones, Tyler Jones, Dexter Kelley, Louie Krupa, Jacob Metz, Jonathan Parra, Jen Pawol, Charlie Ramos, Jeremy Riggs, Derek Thomas, Willie Traynor and Brian Walsh.
