José Navas

José Navas Corzo

• Height 6' 6", Weight 248 lb.

• Born April 25, 1981 in La Guaira, Vargas Venezuela

Biographical Information

José Navas was one of three natives of Venezuela to become a major league umpire in 2020, alongside Edwin Moscoso and David Arrieta. The first Venezuelans to become umpires, Manny Gonzalez and Carlos Torres had done so in 2010 and 2015 respectively. In Navas's case, his first game came at the start of the abbreviated season, on July 24th, only one day after Moscoso, and he worked 34 games that year, all of them in the two central divisions of MLB, until he was summoned to Baltimore, MD to work a four-game series between the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles in early September.

He was significantly older than the average new MLB umpire, being already 38 when he made his debut (as a comparison, his compatriot Moscoso was over a decade younger), but that was a reflection that the path to the majors had not been straightforward for him. He already had some experience in the Venezuelan League - not the easiest environment to work in - when he joined organized baseball's roster of professional umpires in 2015, working in the Gulf Coast League. He moved up quickly, first to the Appalachian League later that year, then to the Florida State League in 2016, then to the Southern League before earning a promotion to the AAA International League in mid-season in 2019, filling in for Chad Whitson who had been promoted to the full-time major league umpiring roster. That promotion came shortly after he had been the crew chief at the 2019 Futures Game. In January 2017, he had been named the Venezuelan Umpire of the Year by his peers and the top umpire in the Appalachian League in 2015. He also worked in the Arizona Fall League in 2019, when MLB tested a robot umpire to call balls and strikes. In one of the games, he ejected prospect Jacob Heyward for arguing one of the calls made by the machine.

After working a number of games every season as a call-up umpire between 2020 and 2023, he did not appear in the majors in 2024.

Related Sites

• Jose Navas on Retrosheet.org