Erik Boland: Sixth inning proves to be a nightmare for Yankees
Yankees Manager Aaron Boone argues with home plate umpire Vic Carapazza and is ejected in the sixth inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on August 14, 2026. Credit: Getty Images/Vaughn Ridley
TORONTO — The Yankees plucked this one straight out of their 2025 Rogers Centre playbook.
And by night’s end, the lone positive was that the red-hot Rays also lost, keeping the Yankees within shouting distance, albeit barely, of the AL East lead at 6 ½ games behind.
Rogers Centre was an endless parade of horror shows for the Yankees last season, a building in which, counting the first two games of a mostly non-competitive four-game ALDS loss to the Blue Jays, they went 1-8 with 75 runs allowed.
The Yankees did take two of three here this season from June 12-14, but their offense then, even in the early stages without Aaron Judge, was in far better shape than the punchless outfit it usually has been for the last seven weeks.
And with every game now having at least a tinge of postseason feel to it, the Yankees reverted to their 2025 Roger Centre selves Friday night in a 3-1 loss to a Blue Jays team somehow within striking distance of the third AL wild-card spot (aided by the overall mediocrity of the league).
“You’ve got to score,” Aaron Boone said through clenched teeth afterward. “Obviously continues to be a challenge for us.”
Boone, ejected for the fourth time this season, which put him in the AL lead for ejections (he led the league or was tied for the lead in ejections the previous five seasons), rarely has hesitated to put the blame for his team’s shortcomings at the feet of what he perceives to be an offending umpire. He appropriately did not do that Friday night after his team’s five-hit output.
From the visiting manager’s office, Boone saw the Rogers Centre roof, open on a spectacular 77-degree night, proverbially cave in on the Yankees in a bizarre bottom of the sixth inning.
The top of the inning had started so well. Trent Grisham, a disappointment at the plate this season but starting to heat up lately, hit his fourth homer in his last six games to lead off the inning against Shane Bieber. His 16th homer of the season made it 1-0.
Then things swiftly devolved.
After Spencer Jones and Ben Rice were retired, Luis Garcia Jr. took a first-pitch breaking ball that appeared low but was called a strike by plate umpire Vic Carapazza. After a brief back-and-forth, Boone was tossed, appearing to say nothing more than “I thought it was down” after Carapazza asked, “What did you say?”
Then Gerrit Cole, brilliant through the first five innings, collapsed in the bottom of the inning.
With one out, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. singled to put runners at first and second. George Springer then grounded sharply to Ryan McMahon, who stepped on third for the second out and fired across to Garcia.
McMahon’s throw bounced in front of Garcia, who failed to handle it. The ball skipped several feet away from the first baseman, who quickly retrieved it and made a poor throw to third trying for Guerrero. The ball bounded well out of play and Guerrero, after colliding with George Lombard Jr. at the bag (third-base umpire Brock Ballou immediately called obstruction on Lombard), scampered home with the tying run. Springer went to second and, on Cole's next pitch, scored on a double to left by longtime Yankees nemesis Alejandro Kirk for a 2-1 lead.
“It’s a key play of the game right there,” Garcia said through his interpreter, lamenting his inability to make an accurate throw to third (though it’s questionable whether even a good throw would have gotten Guerrero).
McMahon put the blame on himself for skipping his throw to Garcia in the first place.
“Springer’s running pretty good and I felt like I had to throw it as soon as I stepped on the bag,” he said. “Just didn’t get enough on it to get it all the way over there. Put Luis in a tough spot over there.”
Boone watched it all from the visiting manager's office, still seething after what he considered to be a cheap ejection. In the pantheon of his 50 career ejections, the vast majority of which have been well-earned, this was one in which a bit more rope from Carapazza was warranted.
“It’s just a tired toss with a guy that was struggling early on in this game,” Boone said of Carapazza, who has run Boone five of those 50 times. “But those things happen, and at the end of the day, we gotta find a way to score.”
Carapazza, challenged early and often by both clubs, had an objectively bad night.
The Yankees had an objectively worse one.
Par for the course at Rogers Centre.
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.
