Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected from Thursday's game against the Tampa Bay Rays, a couple innings after he saw his slumping team burned in a dubious display of umpiring.
Frustration boiled over for Boone in the seventh inning when was tossed for apparently directing some choice words at home-plate umpire Chad Whitson during a mid-inning pitching change. The Yankees' bench had been giving Whitson a hard time throughout the game over his very questionable strike zone, which seemed to favor Rays lefty starter Ryan Yarbrough, particularly against the Yankees' right-handed batters.
In the most glaring such example, Whitson appeared to have a decidedly pitcher-friendly strike zone for a fourth-inning plate appearance by Yankees slugger Clint Frazier. Statcast confirmed what looked to be a series of very generous calls on balls and strikes on Yarbrough's offerings. The popular Yankees blog River Ave. Blues wryly noted that Frazier had run the count to 5-0 when he was called out looking on strikes by Whitson.
The Frazier at-bat was hardly the only blemish for the umps, though. Boone's ire was surely further stoked in the next half-inning after the Frazier at-bat, when Rays outfielder Kevin Kiermaier was awarded first base on what was ruled an infield single despite apparently stepping well outside the first-base line to avoid the tag of Yankees first baseman DJ LeMahieu.
The Kiermaier play set up a big fifth inning for the Rays, allowing them to extend their narrow one-run lead to a more comfortable four-run margin. Compounded with the Frazier at-bat, the sequence of calls going against the Bombers seemingly had both Boone and Yankees fans fuming. Boone's fateful encounter with Whitson came when he emerged from the dugout to make a pitching change amid a four-run barrage by Tampa in the seventh. Whitson tossed Boone from a distance, who appeared to be gesturing toward home plate. Boone then beelined to Whitson, to get his money's worth.