Aaron Boone lost it in the eighth inning of a close Yankees game after another questionable strike call went against Aaron Judge. With the Yankees trailing by one, Judge got rung up on a borderline pitch near the knees. He didn’t like it, and Boone liked it even less. Boone came out of the dugout and lit up the umpire, unloading about how often low pitches get called strikes on Judge. Since becoming an everyday player in 2017, no one in the league has had more called strikes out of the zone go against them than Judge.
Boone went off, calling out both the umpire and catcher Christian Vázquez, accusing them of laughing at him. Vázquez denied it, but Boone wouldn’t drop it. He kept yelling that it’s “not too late” to fix the strike zone and stop calling balls as strikes. Then the same thing happened to Anthony Rizzo, another low pitch called a strike. Boone kept pushing, mocking the idea of the two-inch buffer zone that umpires apparently get on either side of the zone without being penalized for mistakes. He finished his rant by finally chucking his gum, which seemed like a deliberate move. The ump tried to move the game on, but Boone stayed in it, driving home the same point: the pitches were down, and the calls were wrong.