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NEW YORK — Yankees infielder Jose Caballero has been upsetting opposing pitchers all season by waiting until the last possible second to engage pitchers, and it led the benches spilling onto the field during the eighth inning of Monday night’s win over the Pirates.
He calls it his routine.
Without warning, Caballero and the Yankees found out MLB ended the charade in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s 5-3, 10-inning loss to the Pirates in Game 1 of a day-night doubleheader.
“They’re just picking on me,” Caballero said.
Batting with a runner on first base, two outs and Pittsburgh ahead 2-0, Caballero continued his routine.
Caballero took a first-pitch strike facing reliever Carmen Mlodzinski before plate umpire Quinn Wolcott awarded an automatic strike. With Caballero and manager Aaron Boone arguing, the umpiring crew informed the Yankees that MLB had instructed them to call a strike if they perceived the late engagement as intentional deceiving.
“(Wolcott) actually said they were making new rules today and it’s on me because I was deceiving or something like that to the pitcher, which doesn’t make sense because for me,” Caballero said. “I don’t know maybe my English is so bad that I don’t understand. But deceive kind of means that you’re trying to trick someone and I’m not trying to trick someone because I do the same thing over and over.
“You can check my last 50 at-bats and see if I do it the same or not. Or check maybe 100 at-bats or 150. At the end, if you’re gonna make a change on the rule, at least notice us before the game. Not in the game like it happened today. It’s frustrating for me.”
First base umpire Adrian Johnson, the crew chief, said Wolcott made the right call going by the wording of the amended rule.
“From our vantage point, Caballero circumvented the pitch-clock rules,” Johnson told a pool reporter. “It’s been an issue before. He’s been warned about it. He circumvented the rule and we enforced the rule and gave him a violation.”
Caballero seemed shell-shocked talking about the rule change after the game.
“I’ll have to find a different way to get settled, to change my routine I guess, because they don’t like my routine,” he said. “I don’t see the way they see it and I can make an example like in NBA. If you make a new rule in the NBA that you can make three steps, how you gonna pick on the player that actually does the three steps? Then you don’t like it because he’s taking advantage of the new ruling?
“You cannot be picking on a player that is taking advantage of it.”
Caballero is still confused on how he’s breaking the rule.
“I was doing it however they wanted to do it with the nine seconds,” he said. “For everyone it’s eight seconds. For me it was nine. But now they just don’t want me to do my routine, so it’s kind of tricky for me because it’s the way that I get settled, the way that I try to approach my at-bats and now they’re changing my routine.
MLB sees it differently.
“It’s about when he gets in (the batter’s box), he’s not allowed an inordinate amount of time looking down, trying to get the pitcher to cause a violation,” Wolcott said. “There’s no other hitter that gets in the box (and) takes the amount of time that Caballero does while looking down and not making eye contact with the pitcher. Obviously, it’s caused a lot of problems in the past. It’s not going to be allowed anymore.”
One of the Yankees’ main beefs was MLB didn’t bother to forewarn them after having talks earlier this season with Boone going over what was permissible.
“I’ve been told very specifically over and over when we have had issues, like when I’ve had my conversations with the league, like he’s got to be alert at eight seconds,” Boone said. “Cabby looks up at nine just to make sure, and (MLB didn’t have an issue with that). That’s very specifically what I’ve been told. And then today was something different and they didn’t give us the heads up.”
Boone thinks Caballero is being treated unfairly.
“Look, it’s his routine,” he said. “Every batter has their routine. Pitchers hold the ball sometimes. (Hitters) get set and they hold the ball to zero with that in mind.”
Caballero also took issue with the umpires believing deception was involved just with that one pitch in a game in which he had four at-bats.
“I wish I could find someone (in the league office) that I can talk to up there so we can get clear on what they’re trying to say on the new ruling,” he said.
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