Aaron Boone rightly angry at ump, but Yankees also have been exasperating
Aaron Boone #17 of the Yankees argues with home plate umpire Chad Whitson #62 after being thrown out of the game during the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium on June 3, 2021. Credit: Getty Images/Adam Hunger
Aaron Boone doesn’t swing a bat or throw a pitch, but he has a breaking point, just like everyone else wearing pinstripes. And the manager inevitably got there Thursday afternoon with two outs in the seventh inning, when Boone finally went after plate umpire Chad Whitson, far too late to make any sort of impact on the Yankees’ brutal 9-2 loss to the Rays.
What the heck took him so long to get ejected?
Boone, understandably, spent most of the game chirping at Whitson, whose strike zone differential between Gerrit Cole and the Rays’ Ryan Yarbrough was mind-boggling. Watching Yarbrough, the soft-throwing lefty, reminded me of the pre-QuesTec days seeing Tom Glavine start on the black and keep nudging the "zone" outside until strikes were called a half-foot off the plate.
Cole, on other hand, was on a much tighter leash (you can check the MLB overlays yourself) and grew noticeably irritated as the innings passed. Was that the reason Cole had one of his worst outings as a Yankee, allowing five runs over five innings? It figures to be a contributing factor, just as Yarbrough earned his first victory as a starter since 2019 -- a span of 24 winless starts (0-10, 5.04 ERA over that span). Oh, and threw a complete game, the first for the Rays since 2016.
Boone had a right to be super-annoyed Thursday, and frankly, it’s a testament to his indefatigable positivity that he’s not more grouchy on a daily basis, given the Yankees’ underachieving performance this season. They again found ways to short-circuit rallies (0-for-7 RISP), play suspect defense and mostly come off uninspired between the lines.
"I think we were all a little frustrated," Kyle Higashioka said.
On the plus side, no catastrophic baserunning blunders for a day, so one less thing to be irritated about. But this was an opportunity lost. After taking two straight from the Rays, the Yankees had a chance to trim their deficit to 2 1/2 games heading into this weekend’s visit by the second-place Red Sox. Instead, they dropped back to 4 1/2 because of the same chronic problems, and the last thing they needed Thursday was Whitson’s flexible zone taunting them, too.
The turning point of the afternoon came in the fourth inning, with the Yankees trailing, 2-1, after Aaron Judge’s single and a double by Gio Urshela put runners at second and third with none out. It’s near- impossible not to score in that scenario, but after Rougned Odor’s pop-up foul, Clint Frazier had his at-bat essentially stolen from him.
Whitson rung up Frazier on a full-count pitch despite having only one legit strike thrown to him in six pitches, the last one called on an 85-mph cut-fastball that barely nicked the bottom outside corner. Or as YES statistician James Smyth accurately described it, a 5-0 pitch. Sure it’s one AB in an eventual blowout, but the sequence was ridiculous, and Miguel Andujar striking out next didn’t lessen the sting. That inning pretty much defined the Yankees’ afternoon, as well as the first two months-plus of the season, and certainly lit the fuse for Boone going off three innings later during his pitching change.
After Boone handed the ball to Luis Cessa, he started barking at Whitson, then was ejected before walking over to the plate to get in the umpire’s face and continuing to rage. Boone grew so agitated that crew chief Chris Guccione decided to stroll over from his second-base post to stand guard next to them, ready to step in as peacekeeper if necessary.
"I just had some disagreements throughout the day with him and got run obviously when I went out to the mound, where I said some things you can’t get away with," said Boone, who was tossed for the second time this season and 13th as Yankees’ manager. "That’s about the gist of it."
Whitson was infuriating enough on his own, but it’s not as if the Yankees haven’t been operating at a low-simmer for most of this aggravating season. Even DJ LeMahieu -- about as low-key a Yankee as there is on the current roster -- repeatedly smashed his helmet into the dugout rack after getting rung up on strikes in the eighth inning.
By then, the Rays were hopelessly out of reach, anyway. A seven-run deficit to the Yankees these days is like trying to summit Everest in flip-flops. But the .255-hitting LeMahieu, like his underachieving compadres, is coming to the realization that snapping out of this offensive malaise is not automatic.
At 57 games, they’re past small and now into medium sample size territory. When Boone was asked pregame about his confidence level in this group, he smiled.
"You’ve seen the guys on our team?" Boone said.
A few hours later, the manager had seen enough. Mostly of Whitson, but the rest of it must have been exasperating, too.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
