Oswaldo Cabrera, Franchy Cordero lead Yankees' comeback
Oswaldo Cabrera congratulates Franchy Cordero for his solo home run off Cleveland Guardians relief pitcher Trevor Stephan during the seventh inning on Wednesday. Credit: AP/Phil Long
CLEVELAND – Oswaldo Cabrera and Franchy Cordero saved the day from being completely about the umpires, a controversial replay decision that led to two Cleveland runs in the first inning and the Yankees’ first series loss of the season.
That was at least partly avoided when Cabrera roped a two-out RBI single in the ninth off the top of the wall in right against Guardians stud closer Emmanuel Clase, lifting the Yankees to a 4-3 victory in front of 23,164 at Progressive Field.
Cordero’s fourth homer of the trip, a seventh-inning blast, tied it at 3 before Cabrera’s clutch hit in the ninth.
Clay Holmes loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom half but struck out Amed Rosario for his fourth save in four tries.
Still, the oddities of the first inning – which resulted in a lengthy Aaron Boone tirade that resulted in his first ejection of the season – dominated postgame discussion.
“I thought it was not handled right,” Boone said of the umpires. “At all.”
Steven Kwan led off the bottom of the first against Clarke Schmidt, who was mostly ineffective for a third start in a row, with a single, a tailing ball to center that Aaron Hicks, who had a busy opening inning, came in hard on to make the catch.
Rosario followed with a flare of his own that Hicks, again charging hard, got to with a sliding catch. Jose Ramirez doubled, putting runners at second and third and setting up one of the more bizarre sequences of the young season.
Josh Naylor then hit yet another looper to center that Hicks raced in on and caught, according to second base umpire and crew chief Larry Vanover, then doubled Ramirez off second, ostensibly ending the inning.
But replays clearly showed Hicks trapped the ball and there was the separate question of whether Kwan crossed the plate before Ramirez was doubled off.
“When we got together as a crew, we were determining if the run was going to be scored or not. There was a time play. When we got together as a crew, the 15-second clock then shuts off until we break out of our huddle,” plate umpire Chris Guccione told a pool reporter afterward.
Managers have 15 seconds to decide whether or not to challenge a play.
“So, we got together as a crew and we wanted to discuss the whole play, what had happened and if the run scored,” said Guccione, who spoke on behalf of Vanover, who was hit in the head in the fifth inning on a relay throw and was sent to the Cleveland Clinic for evaluation. “We determined when we got together as a crew that the run did not score. So, once we got all that figured out, we went over to Tito [Terry Francona] to tell him what had transpired. We told him, ‘Guys, we have a catch, out at second, no run scores.’ And he promptly told us, ‘OK, I’d like to challenge the catch in the outfield.’ And that’s the thing. He promptly did it. He was already ready. He didn’t have to check or anything. He promptly did it. So, we did all the rest, radioed up to New York [replay central] and they came back with a decision that it was no catch, guys at first and third and they scored a run, obviously, because it was no catch. That was the huddle part of it.”
Boone wasn’t buying it — either from the umpires or from the league, which told him essentially the same thing during an in-game conversation after his ejection. The sixth-year manager, who led the AL in ejections last season with nine, believed the umpires huddled only after hearing the reaction of the crowd to the replay on the massive scoreboard in left that showed, as Guccione said, Hicks did not catch the ball.
“I feel like the emotion of the building and it being on the scoreboard, they [were like], ‘OK, let’s get together now,’” Boone said. “I thought that was wrong…the answer I’ve gotten from Major League Baseball is they did it the right way. If you were all here, and you all were, no chance.”
Boone, still hot about it after the game, credited his team with finishing off the comeback to improve to 8-4 and finish the six-game trip 4-2.
“That’s just a really good, gutsy win right there,” he said.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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