Four and a half inches.
To be exact, 4.55 inches was the distance off the plate of the final pitch of Rougned Odor’s ninth-inning strikeout – yet home plate umpire Gabe Morales called it strike three. Odor was clearly dismayed, and the Yankees’ dugout was so upset that both Phil Nevin and Carlos Mendoza were tossed, leaving the Yankees without their bench and third base coaches - even though it was hitting coach Marcus Thames chirping from the dugout.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone was more reserved and was not tossed, and while he is normally reserved in his press conferences about controversy with the officials, he didn’t hold back very much late Sunday night.
"Obviously, very frustrated, and you saw some of that emotion spill over, obviously,” Boone said. “Why 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."
The Yankees had issues with a wide strike zone in Thursday’s loss to the Rays, too, and catcher Gary Sanchez understands the struggle being behind the plate.
"You know, it happens in baseball,” Sanchez said. “There's a pitch there close to the zone, on those things, from time to time, it's going to happen."
Aaron Judge, who admitted “I’ve never been an umpire,” can understand the inaccuracy at times, too, especially given the bizarre strike zone he has been subject to during his career.
“I don't know what is going through (Morales’) 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,” Judge said. "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 have much to say about that.”
However, the players understand it if it goes both ways – but on Sunday, it didn’t, as a borderline pitch that could’ve ended the 10th inning was called a ball, and Luis Cessa ended up surrendering a two-runs single to Xander Bogaerts that determined the game.
"We want every call going our way, and 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,” Judge said, adding this about Odor’s strikeout: “We 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. But after that, you've got to just move on, get to the next play and it happens."
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