Austin Wells pumped his glove toward Max Fried, as if the Yankees catcher expected the arms of home plate umpire Derek Thomas to follow moments later.<\/p>\n
Fried\u2019s 2-2 fastball to Astros right fielder Cam Smith had caught the outside edge of the zone, and a strike would\u2019ve allowed the Yankees to escape a bases-loaded jam in the fifth still trailing by just two runs.<\/p>\n
But Thomas didn\u2019t call anything. <\/p>\n
Wells crouched in disbelief. <\/p>\n
Two pitches later, Smith doubled to score two runs and extend Houston\u2019s lead. <\/p>\n
Yankees manager Aaron Boone is thrown out of the game after arguing with the home plate umpire during the third inning Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Jason Szenes<\/p>\n
And as a listless Yankees (62-56) group lost 7-1 to the Astros <\/a>on Sunday in The Bronx, this wasn\u2019t the only Thomas call that frustrated them, with manager Aaron Boone getting ejected for an MLB-leading fifth time this season<\/a> in the third inning.<\/p>\n \u201cIt definitely would\u2019ve been nice,\u201d Fried said of the call during the Smith at-bat, \u201cbut no one\u2019s gonna look back and really care, right? You just gotta be able to make the pitch and get out of it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for Boone\u2019s frustrations with Thomas to boil over. <\/p>\n Yankees pitcher Max Fried (54) reacts on the mound in the fifth inning against the Houston Astros at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025, in Bronx, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe reacts after he strikes out swinging to end the game against the Astros on Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Corey Sipkin<\/p>\n Trent Grisham, Ben Rice and Aaron Judge all had pitches outside the zone \u2014 per MLB.com\u2019s locations \u2014 called strikes against them in the first inning.<\/p>\n Then, when a sinker scraped the edge of the zone two innings later and Thomas called a second strike against Ryan McMahon, Boone said enough to get ejected.<\/p>\n He proceeded to hop out of the Yankees dugout and continue arguing with Thomas \u2014 \u201cYou f\u2014ing need to fix it,\u201d Boone said, according to YES Network audio of the exchange \u2014 even as crew chief Jordan Baker stepped between the pair and kept shuffling to block Boone\u2019s path. Postgame, after he watched his lineup manage just three singles and lose for the seventh time in nine games, Boone called the zone \u201ca little all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, I was on [Thomas] a lot,\u201d Boone said. \u201cThat\u2019s over and done with. Is what it is. That isn\u2019t the reason we lost this game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That stemmed from the Yankees not generating a hit until Rice singled in the sixth. <\/p>\n That stemmed from Fried\u2019s strong outing spiraling with a 36-pitch fifth inning. <\/p>\n But near the end of that frame, when a would-be strikeout was followed by a foul ball and then a sinker driven 88.8 mph toward the right field corner, Thomas\u2019 missed call forced Fried to throw two more pitches \u2014 in addition to the six others that followed in the next at-bat before he finally escaped the inning.<\/p>\n And the second one drastically altered his afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cJust wanted to be able to come out of that [jam], especially keeping it in a tight game and keeping it within two,\u201d Fried said. \u201cPushing it to four, it\u2019s on me, and it\u2019s frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin Wells pumped his glove toward Max Fried, as if the Yankees catcher expected the arms of home…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":136667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[2226,5229,1266,405,403,2228,5226,5225,5228,5227,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-136666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-aaron-boone","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-yankees","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115009605028005063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}