NEW YORK — The phone call lasted two minutes. It was supposed to settle a dispute that had already emptied both dugouts, gotten a coach ejected and left the Yankees accusing the league of changing a rule without telling anyone.
It settled nothing, and it left the Yankees no closer to an answer.
The player hung up knowing less than when he answered, and still without an answer to the only question he had asked.
A five-time World Series champion watching from the broadcast booth saw something more troubling than an unresolved rules fight.
Major League Baseball called Jose Caballero between games of Wednesday’s doubleheader to explain the enforcement change that cost him an automatic strike, but the Yankees shortstop came away more confused than before, and Willie Randolph warned on air that the escalating controversy could start affecting how Caballero plays.
Two minutes that clarified nothing
The Yankees infielder was still fuming after the 5-3, 10-inning loss to the Pirates when the league office reached him. He did not learn who was on the other end.
His summary of the conversation was blunt, and it set the tone for everything that followed.
“I don’t even know who I talked to, but the call was over in two minutes,” Caballero said to NJ.com. “All I heard was nonsense.”
He said he opened by asking the official to walk him through the rule from the beginning, because the enforcement no longer matched anything he had been told.
“The guy asked me where to start,” Caballero informed. “I’m like, ‘Can you explain the rule because it sounds like I don’t know the rule?’”
The answer he received was that umpires would decide, case by case, whether he was deceiving the pitcher by waiting until the clock dropped below 10 seconds. Every hitter must still be engaged before the timer reaches eight seconds, with the clock set at 15 seconds with the bases empty and 18 with runners on.
“I guess it’s the umpire’s interpretation, which doesn’t really make sense because the rule is what the rule is,” Caballero replied. “I still don’t know what I can do.”
He ended the call once it became clear neither side was moving.
“At the end of the day, we were talking in circles because the guy doesn’t understand my point,” the Yankees star added. “I do understand his point, but it makes no sense because the rule is the rule.”
The exception the league already made
The detail that has gone largely unnoticed is that Caballero was already operating under a standard written for him alone. Earlier this season, after a warning in Toronto, MLB told him he had to look up at nine seconds while every other hitter answered to eight.
He accepted that arrangement without complaint. He laughed while describing it, because the league has now taken it back.
“They already changed the rule just for me earlier this year,” Caballero said. “I had to look up at the pitcher at nine seconds when it was eight for everyone else. I agreed to that. I was fine with it because at the end of the day, I’m just trying to do my routine.”
The trigger was Monday’s benches-clearing incident, when Pirates reliever Dennis Santana shouted at him over the same tactic during the Yankees series opener. Crew chief Adrian Johnson said the league then instructed his crew to skip warnings entirely and call a violation.
Aaron Boone said the Yankees received no notice before the game. He called the handling embarrassing, noting he had been told repeatedly that nine seconds was acceptable.
A Yankees great warns about the fallout
Willie Randolph, a five-time World Series champion with the Yankees as a player and coach and now a YES Network analyst, addressed the situation on the broadcast after the opener. He did not fault Caballero for the tactic.
“Caballero is not doing anything wrong, it’s just that he’s confused about the rules and they need to just come together and squash this now because it’s really getting out of hand and it feels like they’re picking on Caballero in this whole situation,” Randolph said. “And he’s trying to do his job.”
His larger concern was psychological. Randolph argued that hitters depend on routine, and that a Yankees lineup already scuffling cannot afford a player thinking about the clock instead of the pitch.
“And the thing that I would worry about as a manager is that if this starts to escalate in his mind, is it going to affect his play?” Randolph added. “Right now, he’s playing well, he’s one of the better players on the team. You want him thinking about what he has to do at the plate because players are creatures of habit. You want to get into a rhythm and this has to be squashed immediately. I’m telling you, this can get out of hand.”
Caballero plans to change, but not surrender
Caballero sat out the nightcap, a 2-0 Yankees win that clinched the series, with Anthony Volpe starting at shortstop. He said he will alter his approach before Friday night’s series opener in Philadelphia.
He is not abandoning the underlying principle, and the Yankees have not asked him to. He does not want pitchers dictating the pace of his at-bats.
“I can’t do what I was doing because I’m gonna get penalized,” Caballero said. “But I still don’t want the pitcher to rush me or hold the ball on me. So I’m still going to give them as minimal time as I can because I don’t want the pitcher to have the control of my at-bat.”
He returned to the accusation he has repeated all week, and this time with resignation rather than anger.
“It’s my at-bat. But I guess I just have to accept they’re picking on me,” Caballero said.
The Yankees open in Philadelphia with the Aug. 3 trade deadline approaching and a division race still in front of them. Whether the new routine draws another violation is the first thing anyone will watch, and whether the Yankees get advance notice this time is the second.
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