CHICAGO — Aaron Boone avoided a suspension, if not some slight embarrassment and good-natured ribbing, from his spat with umpire Laz Diaz on Monday night.
The Yankees manager got his money’s worth arguing with Diaz after the home plate umpire ejected him while Boone was still in the dugout during the 5-1 loss to the White Sox. Boone’s antics included drawing a line in the dirt off the plate and mimicking Diaz’s strikeout call.
Overnight, Boone’s theatrics went viral, resulting in plenty of memes, as well as calls and messages from his fellow managers.
“All I know is Laz was telling me — I feel like he, in a way, egged me on to go make a fool of [myself],” Boone said Tuesday. “I guess I obliged.”
Boone spoke Tuesday with Michael Hill, MLB’s senior vice president of on-field operations, about the incident, but the manager declined to share specifics of their talk.
Though he was assessed the fine that typically comes with an ejection — his sixth of the season and 32nd of his career — Boone was able to sidestep what would have been his second suspension of the year.
When Boone was suspended for one game earlier this season, it came a day after his third ejection in a span of 10 games.
“I mean, I don’t like doing that. I think I embarrassed Bella Boone a little bit, so I don’t like that,” Boone said, referring to his daughter. “But I also felt like I needed to fight for what I thought was happening within that game.”
Though Diaz was not solely responsible for the Yankees scoring just one run, leaving 13 men on base or going 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position, Boone certainly had a case.
According to Umpire Scorecards, a website that grades balls and strikes calls for every game, Diaz’s 19 missed calls on Monday were tied for the 13th-most in any game this season.
His called-strike accuracy of 66 percent was well below the league average of 88 percent and his minus-8.6 correct calls above expected — the difference between actual correct calls and expected correct calls — was the fifth-worst mark from any game this season, per the site.
To be clear, Diaz missed calls for both teams, though his overall inaccuracy skewed more unfavorably for the Yankees, according to the website.
The mounting frustration of where the Yankees are at in the season — they entered Tuesday 5 ½ games out of the final playoff spot with 49 games to go — and their offense’s maddening inconsistency may have played a part in Boone getting as animated as he did.
But Diaz engaged equally in their spirited argument.
“Laz was definitely giving it back to me [Monday] night,” said Boone, who has known Diaz, who has umpired in MLB since 1995, well since his playing days. “Hopefully it’s water under the bridge, part of the game, move on.”
Before then, though, Boone heard “a lot of funny stuff” from other managers about his performance, including a call from Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
“I get upset and all that [with umpires], but he’s so good at that, you know, the impersonations,” Cora told reporters in Boston, according to MassLive. “He’s awesome, he’s awesome. That was really good. I told him the hips were really good. He got it right. He friggin’ got it right. I’d call Mike [Hill] and I’ll probably pay half the fine. ‘We got it, we got it.’ ”
MLB is in the process of trying out an electronic strike zone called the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system in Triple-A this year.
Some of the games use the ABS for every called pitch, while others still use the home plate umpire and allow teams three challenges per game. It is not yet clear when either of those systems might arrive in the major leagues.
If Boone had challenges at his disposal on Monday, though, he likely would have been busy using them throughout the night.
“I’m probably in favor of some kind of something,” Boone said. “But I don’t know what all that looks like. I still feel strongly that the game should be called by umpires.”