Aaron Boone was more upset about another missed call than Max Fried’s stole no-no

For most New York Yankees fans, the late innings of their team's 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday were focused on official scorer Bill Mathews, who not only decided to take away Max Fried's no-hit bid a full two innings after the fact — a process that certainly seemed questionable even if he did eventually get the call right — but also threw a hissy fit to the media about it afterward.

While fans were busy screaming about Mathews, Yankees manager Aaron Boone was screaming about something else entirely. Just minutes before Mathews decided to flip Chandler Simpson's sixth-inning ground ball from an error to a hit, Aaron Judge came to bat for New York in the top of the eighth and appeared to add to New York's lead with a laser home run out to left field.

But the umpiring crew ruled it a foul ball instead. In their defense, Steinbrenner Field — the Yankees' spring training stadium, which the Rays are calling home for the 2025 season amid the reconstruction of Tropicana Field — has shorter foul poles that make this sort of call more difficult than it otherwise would be. Upon review, though, it certainly seemed as though an alternate camera angle gave the replay crew all the evidence it needed to overturn the call.

Instead, the call inexplicably stood. Judge struck out looking later in the at-bat, and Boone had decided he'd seen enough, immediately bolting out of the dugout and getting ejected.

And when the game was over, he was much more outraged on Judge's behalf than he was for Fried.

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Yankees manager Aaron Boone rips into umpires after botching Aaron Judge home run

Boone didn't love the process by which Fried was given his first hit, but he acknolwedged that Mathews' ultimate ruling was the correct one, correctly noting that neither Fried nor Goldschmidt stood much of a chance of beating Simpson to first base even if Goldschmidt had fielded the grounder cleanly.

About the Judge would-be homer, however, he was far less understanding, especially considering the replay angles available. "The audacity of the call standing is remarkable," Boone said, per MLB.com's Bryan Hoch. "It's a home run."

It's hard to argue with him. Again, these are somewhat unique circumstances: There's a reason why MLB ballparks have taller foul poles, in order to make sure that these sorts of mistakes are much harder to make. It's hard to blame the third-base umpire for getting it wrong in real time given just how far above the pole Judge's ball flew.

But the replay seemed to offer exactly the sort of convincing evidence that officials need to overturn the call on the field. It's unclear why they felt unable to do so, and because they're not available to the media afterward, we'll never know. The Yankees came away with the win anyway, but you can understand why Boone would be troubled, and worried that they might not be so lucky in a more important spot down the road.