The Yankees blew their chances for a win Sunday on the way to a 6-5 loss to the Boston Red Sox in 10 innings, but they were also impacted by a couple of questionable calls.
After Rougned Odor‘s strikeout looking on a ball well off the plate ended the ninth inning, the Yankees did not get a borderline call in the following frame, leading to a walk and eventual go-ahead Red Sox runs.
“Obviously, very frustrated,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “And you saw some of that emotion spill over, obviously. Why a second (ejection), (bench coach Carlos Mendoza) Mendy was thrown out is absolutely ridiculous. But yeah, that’s just playing for a lot and obviously going through a really tough stretch and some of that emotion spilling over.”
RF Aaron Judge, who started a ninth-inning rally by working a one-out walk and scoring the Yankees’ game-tying run from first on SS Gleyber Torres‘ RBI double, bit his tongue when asked about Odor’s call.
“It’s tough to say,” he said. “I’ve never been an umpire, so I don’t know what is going through his mind, what it feels like to be in that situation, what he sees. He saw it, obviously, catching the corner. We kind of felt differently about it.
“But there’s nothing you can do. As a batter, all you can do is try your best to either fight to get another pitch. Out of the hand, if he thinks it’s a ball, it’s a ball. It happens, so I don’t really — I ain’t got much to say about that call yet.”
RHP Luis Cessa in the 10th inning did not receive a return call, missing on a low ball and giving the Red Sox two runners before Xander Bogaerts‘ eventual two-run single.
“You know, it happens,” said C Gary Sanchez though an interpreter. “It happens in baseball. There’s a pitch there close to the zone … on those things, from time to time, it’s going to happen.”
Judge delved deeper into Sanchez’s point.
“We saw it a little different and, of course, we want every call going our way,” Judge said. “We want balls off the plate, too, when we’ve got our guys on the mound. But it’s part of the game and it just didn’t go our way tonight and there’s nothing I can complain about. I can go through a lot of different at-bats throughout the game where there might’ve been a questionable call late, but we had pitches to hit earlier in that at-bat that we could’ve — we never would’ve been in that, gotten to that pitch if we got to our pitch.
“So it’s, for me, nothing you can really — get upset in the moment, because that’s being competitive and being in the moment. Your juices are flowing. But after that, you’ve got to just move on, get to the next play and it happens.”