Winters, Cederstrom to be ump crew chiefs in wild-card games

NEW YORK (AP) - Veteran umpires Mike Winters and Gary Cederstrom are crew chiefs for the wild-card games this week.

Winters will work first base when the New York Yankees host the Minnesota Twins in the American League playoffs Tuesday night. Alfonso Marquez calls balls and strikes, while the rest of the crew includes Lance Barksdale, Eric Cooper, Tripp Gibson and John Tumpane.

Cederstrom will be at first base Wednesday when the Colorado Rockies visit the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL wild-card game. Jim Reynolds gets the assignment behind home plate, with Jordan Baker, Mark Carlson, Chris Guccione and David Rackley completing the crew.

Mike Muchlinski and Bill Welke will be replay officials for the wild-card games.

Major League Baseball on Monday also announced umpires for the best-of-five Division Series that begin later in the week. Crew chiefs will be Ted Barrett (Boston vs. Houston), Dana DeMuth (AL wild-card winner vs. Cleveland), Gerry Davis (NL wild-card winner vs. Los Angeles Dodgers) and Jerry Layne (Chicago Cubs vs. Washington).

Davis has worked 133 postseason games, most in history.

Greg Gibson, Tom Hallion, James Hoye and Tim Timmons will be replay officials during the Division Series.

Among the umpires assigned to the Red Sox-Astros series is Angel Hernandez, who sued Major League Baseball this year alleging race discrimination. Hernandez's suit cites his lack of World Series assignments in the past decade and baseball not promoting him to crew chief as evidence of discrimination.

MLB has asked a U.S. District Court in Cincinnati to dismiss the lawsuit.

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