Aaron Boone ejected again: Is Yankees manager crossing the line or does he have a point?
NEW YORK – Yankees manager Aaron Boone quickly went from simmer to boil again, with a strike zone complaint as the familiar root cause of Thursday night’s ejection.
Boone has now been tossed from one game in each of the Yankees’ last three series. No surprise, he's leading the league in early goodbyes.
Once more, Boone didn’t think he’d crossed a line.
Afterward, he didn’t blame issues with plate ump Edwin Moscoso’s judgment for a 3-1 loss to second-place Baltimore, as the Orioles left Yankee Stadium by taking two of three games.
"Comes down to we didn’t mount enough offensively," Boone said of his club managing three hits against Orioles starter Kyle Gibson and two relievers.
"For as well as we’ve been swinging the bats, Gibson was able to hold us down," Boone said of the right-hander's seven shutout innings.
Squeezing Clarke Schmidt's strike zone?
Count the young and resourceful Orioles (33-17) as one more AL East foe that doesn’t shrink at the Stadium, having bounced back with two wins after Tuesday’s devastating loss to the Yanks (30-22).
That’s when Baltimore handed back an early four-run lead and watched Aaron Judge tie the game off their terrific closer, Felix Bautista, with a ninth-inning homer to set up a 10-inning Yankees win.
On Wednesday night, the Orioles came back from a four-run deficit to score a 9-6 win.
By early Thursday night, the data backed Boone’s assertion that Moscoso was squeezing Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt out of several strikes, raising the manager’s temperature.
Schmidt’s pitch count was inflated by two first-inning walks, but he should have been out that inning on 12 pitches – only shortstop Anthony Volpe booted a grounder to his left that was wrongly scored a hit.
Still, Schmidt held it together over five innings, yielding just one run, in the fifth.
But Boone was long gone by then, having been tossed during an argument before the bottom of the third inning that turned nasty.
"I really didn’t do that much," said Boone, feeling his dugout complaints hadn’t been excessive, though, "I thought there was some egregious stuff going on."
Aaron Boone: 'I should not have been thrown out'
But the letter of the law states you can’t argue balls and strikes.
Plus, any benefit of the doubt for Boone with umpires might have been eroded by his track record, with an MLB-leading nine ejections last season.
“I should not have been thrown out," said Boone, who complained of Moscoso’s "dismissive attitude" toward Boone’s complaint. “He just wasn’t going to deal with it."
As the first-base umpire the night before, perhaps Moscoso hadn’t appreciated Boone’s dismissive gesture when Moscoso clearly blew a call at first base against the Yankees that was quickly overturned on replay.
Whether Moscoso was too quick to eject, or Boone was too loud to remain, was a foregone thought when a red-hot Boone charged onto the field, trying three times to make his point directly to Moscoso.
After succeeding once, crew chief Chris Guccione blocked Boone’s path to Moscoso.
"I didn’t need to be restrained," said Boone. "The dismissive attitude of walking away, I took exception to."
Aaron Boone said he’s 'not advocating' for Robo Umps
Schmidt, who threw 97 pitches in five innings, said he "made an emphasis to thank" his manager for the support.
"I know he’s always going to have our backs," said Schmidt, adding that he’s made "a lot of really good strides" over his last two starts, lowering his ERA from 6.30 to 5.58.
"But clearly he shouldn’t have to throw almost 30 pitches in the first inning," said Boone, adding that from a pitch count perspective, "I thought it hurt Clarke, who threw the ball really well against a tough lineup."
Boone said he’s "not advocating" for Robo Umps to call balls and strikes, which could be on MLB’s doorstep.
"I think these guys do, for the most part, a great job and work really hard at it," Boone said.
Taking a wider view, there’s a lot more pressure for Boone – in his sixth year with a World Series-caliber club – to win a pennant while piloting a $277 million payroll, regardless of who’s on the injured list.
At one point, speaking generally, Boone mentioned that tempers rise “when you’re playing for a lot,’’ and the Yankees undoubtedly are, even in late May, in an unrelenting division.