The New York Yankees were perfect Monday night with five ABS challenges. Unfortunately, it did not translate to a win. The Seattle Mariners walked off a thrilling pitcher’s duel 2-1 after the Yankees could make very little of their incredible eye at the plate. Aaron Boone wasn’t happy about having to continue challenging the pitches, though.
New York Yankees continue hot ABS start
Teams are only given two ABS challenges per game. Beyond that, they have to continue getting them right to earn another one until extra innings, where one more is granted. The New York Yankees ended up making five successful challenges in a close loss to the Seattle Mariners on Monday night.
The success began early on when Jose Caballero correctly challenged two pitches, including a third strike, in the second inning. That used up the two that the Yankees were given, but they continued making successful challenges to keep them alive.
Giancarlo Stanton correctly challenged a called third strike in the fourth inning and singled (though he was thrown out at second on the play). Immediately after that, Jazz Chisholm Jr. correctly challenged a first-pitch strike call, although he would go on to strike out.
In total, they were perfect on five attempts, and they’ve successfully challenged 10 in a row. The only failed challenge was the very first ABS challenge in MLB history on last week’s Opening Day bout with the San Francisco Giants. Jose Caballero challenged incorrectly, but no Yankee’s been wrong since.
Aaron Boone unhappy with umpires
Aaron Boone has been tossed from games his fair share of times for arguing balls and strikes. The ABS system should help prevent that, and the Yankees are proving early on that it does. Boone might’ve been tossed last night if the ABS system hadn’t been in place.
Still, he doesn’t like that the umpires continue getting it wrong and putting the onus on his players to make the right calls. “Those are razor-thin pitches sometimes,” Boone said. “You don’t want to always have to be challenging. But good on the guys for just hammering the strike zone right now.”
He is proud of his team for getting it right, though. “Really good job by the guys,” Boone said. “When you have that kind of success rate, it’s not going to be like that every night. But I thought every one was obviously warranted, and a couple in some key spots to give us a chance to build an inning. We just weren’t able to build much offensively tonight.”
Mariners walk it off despite ABS misfortune
All the challenges did very little for the New York Yankees on offense. They mounted just one run against the Seattle Mariners, leaving the door open for a walkoff in the ninth inning, which is exactly what happened.
Cal Raleigh, who started the day on the bench but pinch hit in the seventh, was the hero. With two on and one out, Raleigh poked a single just inside first base and sent the winning run home, giving the Yankees their first loss of the year.
“I was just looking for something hard over the heart of the plate,” Raleigh said of his winning at-bat. “It cut in on my hands a little bit, but I was able to keep it fair.” The win prevented the Mariners, the defending AL West champions, from dropping to below .500 on the year.
Raleigh is a catcher, and he played three World Baseball Classic games. Therefore, the Mariners want to take it easy with him. “Coming out of spring training, he had sort of a shorter spring training in a lot of ways,” manager Dan Wilson said. “Didn’t want to spike his workload too much.”
They ended up needing him anyway, and he delivered in his second at-bat off the bench.
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