Will Yankees manager Aaron Boone's ejections go up or down with ABS?

TAMPA, Fla. — Aaron Boone has been asked some form of the question throughout  spring training.

And really, the questioning informally began in 2022 when the minor leagues started experimenting with the ABS (automated ball-strike) system that will be a part of Major League Baseball this season.

The question: Will Boone, who has led or tied for the American League lead in ejections for five straight seasons and who already is tied for 30th in MLB history in managerial ejections (46) in eight big-league seasons, get tossed significantly less with the challenge system in place?

Boone, ejected only five times during his 12-year big-league career as a player, has always answered the question similarly: “Oh, I’m sure I’ll still find some reason.”

But in a recent conversation with Newsday regarding the topic, he took issue with the question’s premise.

“I actually think there’s more reasons now. This brings in another layer to get [ejected],” Boone said of the two challenges each team gets (those challenges are infinite in number if a team is correct when using them but are lost when wrong). “So I think in theory, ‘are yours going to go up?’ is the question. My answer is I hope it goes down because I want it to go down. But I think the new rule is just a new rule to be upset about. In theory it might go up, that’s what I think. Knowing myself and sometimes I can be a little passionate, vindictive when I think something’s gone wrong.”

Boone said the word “vindictive” with a smile.

The rest, not as much.

“He’ll still get run,” one umpire said with a laugh. “Won’t be able to help himself. Most of them [managers] won’t. It’s just part of it.”

Boone’s players wholeheartedly agree. In a non-scientific clubhouse poll conducted by Newsday, all of them let out hearty laughs when asked the original question: Will their manager get tossed less this season?

“That’s a good question right there,” Oswaldo Cabrera said, a smile never leaving his face. “I think [less]. The umpire has to be more accurate, so I think that will be good for Boonie.”

“Good question,” Clarke Schmidt said. “I’m going to say it goes down just because it’s more objective now. A lot of the previous stuff was subjective. There’s no gray area; it’s black or white.”

After pondering the question for a second or two, Will Warren said he believes Boone’s ejection total will go down.

Warren then quickly began talking himself out of it.

“But I think if we run out [of challenges] early and the umpire starts opening it up a little bit . . . I don’t know, that’s his job to get after them sometimes,'' he said. "I don’t think it’s automatic [Boone’s ejections will decrease].”

Giancarlo Stanton is entering his 17th big-league season and has never been thrown out (the DH is popular with umpires; he doesn’t say much to them, and when he does, it is done in such an understated way that even cameras typically don’t pick up on it).

“He will find his new means of an early exit, I’m sure,” Stanton said, his smile a mile wide. “But it won’t necessarily be balls and strikes.”

He paused.

“But I could see him getting giddy if we run out of challenges,” Stanton said, using “giddy” to mean the opposite of its typical definition of ''happily excited.''

James Rowson, thrown out three times as the Yankees' hitting coach since 2024 and five times overall in his coaching career, eagerly dived in on the question.

“If I think about this realistically, because he’s so dialed in, they could increase,” Rowson said. “I’m more concerned about if we’re out of challenges, how the reaction is, because at that point you want to make sure everybody’s still doing things the way they should do them. In my mind, I’m feeling like they could increase a little bit.”

There is a clip, easy enough to find online, of an on-field tantrum by Lou Piniella from a 1998 game in Cleveland in which a call went against the fiery manager's Mariners and he embarked on a cap-kicking expedition across the infield. Cameras caught two of his players, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jay Buhner, in the dugout all but doubling over in laughter.

Boone, who took over for Joe Girardi in 2018, went nearly two months on the job before earning his first managerial ejection. He was expelled on May 22 of that year in a game against the Rangers at Globe Life Park by Pat Hoberg after a one-sided discussion of the strike zone.

Boone was tossed only three more times that season, then started getting into a groove in 2019, when he was kicked out of five games. He’s led the league five straight years, the last four all by himself. Oakland’s Bob Melvin tied Boone in early departures in 2021 with six.

Boone responded by blowing away the field with nine ejections in 2022. His league-leading totals the following three years were seven, six and seven.

Bobby Cox ranks as the career leader in ejections with 162 (in 4,508 games managed) followed by John McGraw (121 ejections in 4,769 games). While totals like that are out of reach for Boone (probably), his career ranking of 30th  nonetheless is impressive. He’s managed 1,194 career games compared to Mike Scioscia and Ned Yost, who are next on the list in career ejections with 47. Yost managed 2,544 games and Scioscia managed 3,078.

Boone is second in ejections among active managers behind Terry Francona. Francona is tied with Gene Mauch in 20th place with 54, reaching that total in 3,784 games.

“There’s occasions where I’m fine with it and I’m good with it and I think it was necessary and good and good for our team,” Boone said of the notion that he “likes” getting run. “Whether it was protecting an individual, whether it was sending a message to our team, whatever. There’s times. But generally speaking, I don’t like it. I try to toe the line.”

Though perhaps not in the same league — not yet, anyway — as notorious umpire-baiting managers such as Billy Martin, Earl Weaver and Piniella when it comes to made-for-TV tirades against umpires, Boone has had some memorable ones.

His “savages in the box” rant at then-minor-league call-up umpire Brennan Miller, now a full-time member of the umpiring staff, in 2019 probably is the most famous (made even more so by the lip-reading prowess of a Yankees fan named Jimmy O’Brien who, along with close friend Jake Storiale, co-founded Jomboy Media, which was established in 2017 and exploded into national prominence soon after the “savages” incident).

Then there was Boone’s ejection in a 2023 game against the White Sox in Chicago by Laz Diaz, who joined the full-time umpire staff in 1999 and umpired the preponderance of Boone’s playing career (1997-2009).

After Diaz — a former Marine who despite the social media enmity he engenders is extremely well-liked by players and coaches across the sport — punched out Anthony Volpe on an eighth-inning pitch in that Aug. 8 game, Boone was summarily ejected. Toward the end of what was an old-school nose-to-nose argument (picture Weaver, cap turned around, going at it with Ken Kaiser, a former professional wrestler turned umpire, his cap also turned around), Boone mimicked Diaz’s pull-back called third strike mechanic.

According to multiple people familiar with the umpire community, Diaz himself found the mimicry funny.

Which begged another question: Are Yankees players stifling laughs in the dugout the way Griffey and Buhner could not?

“No, I think when things happen and he’s getting ejected, it’s because something really matters,” Cabrera said. “It’s something that’s really important. In that time, it’s not time to joke about it.”

Ah, if only . . . 

“Yeah, there’s an entertainment factor, I’ll say that,” Schmidt said. “Laughing? You want to kind of minimize that, but I would say there’s definitely an entertainment factor.”

Warren smiled again at that part of Schmidt’s comments.

“There is definitely an entertainment factor,” he said, the word “definitely” getting some emphasis. “I think you know when it’s coming because he’s probably chirped them a couple of times and the umpire’s maybe told him, ‘That’s enough, Boonie.’ And you can see it start stirring up again until the ticking time bomb goes off.”

Stanton has been in the batter’s box or in the on-deck circle more than a few times when Boone has been thrown out.

“If you’re the hitter when he comes out, that’s harder to try and keep it in,” Stanton said. “If he does something like he did in Chicago [with Diaz], something like that . . . ”

Stanton’s voice simply trailed off in a laugh.

There is, however, another side to the story.

Though Boone, by and large, is viewed in the umpire ranks as somewhat of a chronic complainer and, at least early in his career, far too prone to go after minor-league call-up umpires such as Miller — umpires are protective of their “rookies” the same way managers/coaches are protective of theirs — he is far from universally disliked.

Although his ability to annually stack ejections like cordwood suggests otherwise, Boone isn’t in a constant state of vexation against the umpires.

“Eighty percent of them I really like personally, and maybe upwards of that I think are really good at what they do,” Boone said. “It’s very rarely personal for me when I’m going after someone. And I’m sure some of them agree. I’m sure some of them probably think I’m a pain in the [expletive]. I get that. But I also think I’m a pretty good guy, and I’m pretty easy to talk to and deal with, and I try to have a relationship with them. And, the truth is, I like a lot more than I don’t. Like, genuinely.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

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.