Add The New York Post on Google PHILADELPHIA — José Caballero insists he is not mad.
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His reaction the last few days to the league tweaking its pitch clock rules (or interpretations) in response to his season-long routine in the batter’s box would suggest otherwise, but even after an off day Thursday, the Yankees utilityman said he was still lacking clarity on what he could and could not do.
“I’m not mad at anyone,” Caballero said Friday at Citizens Bank Park. “I just want to be a baseball player.”
Pitch clock rules state that a batter must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the time there are eight seconds left on the clock.
Caballero did that Wednesday (he was actually alert at nine seconds) but was still hit with a pitch-clock violation because, as he has done all season, he spent the seconds before the eight-second mark in the box but looking down until the last possible second.
Unbeknownst to Caballero and the Yankees, MLB decided to crack down on his tactics beginning Wednesday, restricting hitters from attempting “to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position.”
Caballero, though, does not see it as deception but rather his routine, which meant entering Friday’s game against the Phillies — he did not play the nightcap of Wednesday’s doubleheader — he was still trying to figure out a new routine in the batter’s box.
“I have to see from when I get in the box,” Caballero said. “We’ll see.”
On Friday, Caballero seemed to be a mix of despondent and still ticked off as he discussed his new reality.
His first four answers to questions on the subject were all one word.
He had a brief conversation with the league between Wednesday’s games — he said Mike Hill, MLB’s senior vice president of on-field operations, was on the phone and then passed it to “someone else” — but it only lasted a few minutes and clearly was not satisfactory, in his view.
Caballero indicated again that he felt like he is getting picked on, but that he would not continue trying to push the issue.
“They [the league] are above and they control everything,” Caballero said. “We ain’t figuring this out. They say what they had to say. They’re the league, they control [things]. I just have to obey.”
Aaron Boone said he has also had multiple conversations with Hill about the issue — as he has all season — and indicated they “have to be” OK with where things stood as of Friday.
Asked if it was worth Caballero continuing to push the issue, Boone pushed back.
“Worth what?” Boone said. “Worth having a routine and getting in there and being alert at nine seconds? I mean, I’ve heard the thing of, ‘He’s the only one that does it.’ Every hitter is the only one that does something. At the end of the day, they decide the rules. We have to try to comply with them, which we certainly have done, but obviously there needs to be some kind of adjustment, so we’ll do that.
“At the end of the day, it’s about going out there and playing and being productive. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
To that end, aside from all the back-and-forth with his routine in the box, Caballero has not been productive consistently enough with the bat.
Over his last 25 games entering Friday, he was hitting just .193 with a .549 OPS, part of the reason (along with struggles from fellow shortstop Anthony Volpe) why the calls for top prospect George Lombard Jr. have only grown louder in recent days.
“Kind of up and down,” Boone said of Caballero’s at-bats over the past month. “He’s had some big at-bats. … I think as a group, we’ve all gone through it a little bit where everyone’s probably capable of a little bit more. We’ve kind of all gone through it a little bit together. As a result, as a team over the last month, we haven’t been as good as we expect offensively. We all need to get going a little bit more.”
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But Boone did not sound worried about Caballero losing his edge — annoying pitchers by playing the game within the game — because of the new rule interpretation.
“He’s a killer,” Boone said. “He knows how to play and he’ll do what he needs to do to adjust.”
