Major League Baseball internally deemed umpire Hunter Wendelstedt’s Monday ejection of Yankees manager Aaron Boone a “bad ejection,” a source briefed on the situation tells SNY.
That confirms Boone’s “I think the league is upset about it” comment on Jomboy Media’s Talkin’ Yanks podcast. The skipper also said that he had “no recourse” and had “no idea” how the wrong could be righted.
Indeed, while discipline of managers for bad ejections plays out publicly via suspensions issued by MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill, the process for umpires is less clear.
So, we endeavored to find out. Here’s the answer:
Umpires are evaluated on every game for balls, strikes and other calls — but also for “game management.” A bad ejection falls under the latter category.
If an umpire has a bad evaluation for a game, it impacts the evaluation on his body of work for the season (similar to how an F on a test will impact one’s grade for the entire semester — it’s not insurmountable, but won’t help).
Season evaluations determine whether umpires receive desirable assignments to the All-Star Game and the postseason. All of those assignments bring extra pay. Evaluations also factor into promotions to crew chief.
Wendelstedt is not a crew chief, and he did not receive any postseason assignments in 2023.
Wendelstedt’s first-inning hook of Boone on Monday was ill-advised on several levels. After Boone argued briefly about a check swing called, Wendelstedt warned Boone to stop. Boone responded with a thumbs up gesture and shut his mouth.
A fan sitting behind the dugout shouted “Let’s go, home plate!” and Wendelstedt tossed Boone.
“Aaron, you’re done,” Wendelstedt said during the ensuing confrontation. “I don’t care who said it. You’re gone.”
“[Boone] said that ‘a fan said it, a fan said it,’” Wendelstedt told a pool reporter after the game. “I said, ‘I don’t care who said it.’ … It’s foolish to throw out a player if you don’t know who did it. The manager’s there, Aaron took the hit and he probably you know is not the one who made the comment but once again, he’s the manager of the Yankees and he’s responsible for the team.”
Wendelstedt also said, “This isn’t my first ejection … in the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said. I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying.”
Even if a Yankee had yelled at an umpire — and there is no evidence to suggest that one did — the ejection of Boone would still have been considered a poor one. It was early in the game, and the argument wasn’t intense enough to merit tossing a manager at that point.
Presumably, this ill-advised conflict would have been reflected in Wendelstedt’s evaluation.
Source Agencies
