John Schneider has a point with comments on Yankees after Blue Jays ejection

We've heard of "Manny being Manny" but José Caballero wants everyone to know there is a new show in town. The New York Yankees shortstop was the centre of attention during Sunday's series finale against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It wasn't just the fact he hit a three-run home run in the ninth inning that sealed the Yankees 8-3 win. Or the fact that he moved around the diamond and played second base, third base and left field all in one game. It was more for the fact that he and home plate umpire Steven Jaschinski spent way too much time arguing over the semantics of the pitch clock.

During Caballero's at-bat in the sixth inning, Jaschinski stopped the pitch clock at nine seconds because Caballero was in the batters box, but looking at the dirt and not looking at Blue Jays' pitcher Spencer Miles. The rule states the batter must be alert to the pitcher by eight seconds, other wise they are charged an automatic strike. Caballero felt he was well within his rights to be doing what he was doing, but Jaschinski disagreed and so did Blue Jays' manager John Schneider.

After the game, Schneider told reporters, "There’s a lot of major league players in this league. There seems to be one guy that has an issue with it. It sucks that a pitcher like Spencer Miles has to sit out there for as long as he did. Seems like it could have been handled a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently than it was. But, again, that’s not why we lost, but it’s Major League Baseball, everyone knows the rules.”

As Caballero and Jaschinski continued to argue, Yankees manager Aaron Boone also came out of the dugout during the at-bat, prolonging the nonsense. The Blue Jays managed to get out of that inning and it felt like the matter should have been laid to rest, with Caballero, after the game, hoping to get some clarification on the rule.

Caballero told reporters, "“I need it because I do the same thing over and over. I do the same move. It’s not my fault the pitchers rush a little bit. You can tell that every time the pitchers don’t rush, it’s no problem at all. But whenever they get (runners) on and they start thinking faster and they rush, that’s when the problem comes. But that’s not my fault. I do the same thing over and over, so please come out here and tell us the actual rule because I’m kind of confused at this point.”

And so to were a lot of Blue Jays' fans and the team. Why didn't they just call a strike on Caballero then? Why give a warning, and allow him to leave the baters box and continue the argument with no reprecussions?

The only one that did get ejected was Schneider, who came out to argue a balk call against Blue Jays reliever Jeff Hoffman later in the game. It put a bow on an incredibly frustrating game, and series for the Blue Jays.

Blue Jays losing ground fast by not taking care of their own business

The biggest problem in all of this is that the Blue Jays have very rarely done enough this season to separate themselves from their opponents to not let instances like this become a distraction. With a -22 run differential and a 34-38 record (On Jun. 15) the Blue Jays haven't played enough games where they have comfortable leads, but they haven't played bad enough to throw in the towel just yet.

But going 1-2 against the team they are chasing in the division isn't going to get them closer to achieving their goals. The team as a whole needs to take that next step forward and find ways to be more consistent, and play in games where an argument over a single ball or strike call isn't the play that makes or breaks the outcome.

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