New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected from Monday’s game against the Chicago White Sox after complaining about a number of strike calls from umpire Laz Diaz. With six ejections on the season, Boone is tied for most in MLB this season and is on pace to break his league-leading nine ejections in 2022.
The incident occurred in the top of the eighth inning after shortstop Anthony Volpe struck out looking. During his argument with Diaz, which included a number of expletives before and after the ejection, Boone marked areas in the left-handed batter’s box, seemingly to note particularly egregious strike calls.
“You f–-king stink,” Boone yelled during a part of the dispute picked up on the broadcast.
In addition to marking the batter’s box during his rant, Boone also imitated Diaz’s strikeout call in an animated fashion. While a review of Volpe’s at-bat showed that the pitch Boone argued was, in fact, a strike, Umpire Scorecards also concluded that Diaz made several calls throughout the game that significantly hurt the Yankees. He only called strikes with 66% accuracy throughout the contest.
Though the Yankees were hindered by poor umpiring, the team also had several opportunities to score and failed to do so. New York went quietly to the White Sox, now 46-68 this season, and fell even further in the Wild Card standings. With a 58-55 record, the Yankees are last in the AL East and are 5.5 games out of a playoff spot.
When Aaron Judge returned from injury last month, some hoped that his presence would revitalize the offense, but that has not occurred. The team has scored 4.1 runs per game on average since July 15, well below the top scorers over the course of the entire season. In that span, New York has only scored more than seven runs five times and lost two of those games.
