If Joe West thinks that players will lose respect for an umpire if they don't throw out someone for something that happens a dozen times every game, I've got a nice piece of swamp I'll like to sell him.
Problem with officiating (in all sports) is the power of the officials union. They have a monopoly on high level officials, so they have literally all the bargaining power. If the league pisses them off, they can threaten a strike, and the minor league umpires, as a whole, are worse (and even if they were roughly the same, they would refuse to cross the picket lines in solidarity). Leaving you with a situation of either caving, or making high school and college umpires your replacements. It didn't work out so well for the NFL.
But this leads to the horrible situation of the umpire unions essentially vetoing any attempts at accountability. We do know there is some sort of discipline for umpires, but all the direct punishment is confidential and not disclosed to the players or fans. The only thing you can do overtly is to deny umpires playoff and all star games appearances. Then you get ridiculous situations like Angel Hernandez suing MLB for "racial discrimination", despite him being at the bottom of player polls on performance. All of these issues compound to a situation where there is no incentive for umpires to improve or self-reflect. Their incorrect calls, arrogance, and vanity are support by their union and de facto MLB. I'm OK with umpires making mistakes, it happens. I have a problem when they don't own them, and 99% of the time they don't. Why do umpires more or less have a job for life? The last purge of poor officials was almost 20 years ago, and I'm not sure there was ever one before that. I don't understand why umpires can't have a respectful relationship with players. It's clear how far along that goes, with Jim Joyce being universally regarded as one of the best umpires, no surprise given that he respected those he officiated and wasn't afraid to own his mistakes. Then you have idiots like Joe West, Bob Davidson, and Angel Herandez. It's honestly a disgrace and it's converting me to the option that robots should do the officiating.