With all that’s going on around Jose Caballero and his controversial batting tactic, Yankees legend Willie Randolph wonders if it will get into his head and adversely impact his play.
Randolph, a five-time World Series champion as a player and coach with the Yankees and a current YES Network analyst, said that Caballero and the team must avoid this.
Advertisement
“This is so complicated because you have two sides: you have the pitcher’s rhythm and the hitter’s rhythm,” Randolph said on air following the first game of the doubleheader with the Pirates on Wednesday.
“Caballero is not doing anything wrong, it’s just that he’s confused about the rules and they [MLB and the Yankees] 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. And he’s trying to do his job.
“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? 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.”
MLB, weary of Caballero’s routine of waiting to acknowledge the pitcher just before the pitch clock reached eight seconds, told umpires Wednesday that his regimen amounted to deception.
Advertisement
Yankees moneyline is sitting at +119 on DraftKings for Friday’s interleague matchup versus the Phillies. Our comprehensive DraftKings Sportsbook review provides a trustworthy guide on how to use their app.
Plate umpire Quinn Wolcott charged Caballero with a pitch clock violation in the sixth inning that led to a strikeout and the ejection of hitting coach James Rowson as the Yankees lost a doubleheader opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-3 in 10 innings.
“I’ve seen other guys do some other things and they don’t call anything on them,” Caballero said. “They’re just picking on me.”
Benches and bullpens cleared at the end of the eighth inning during Monday night’s series opener when Pirates reliever Dennis Santana yelled at Caballero for taking too long to get ready in the batter’s box. Then on Wednesday, Wolcott charged Caballero with a violation in the sixth inning while the batter faced Carmen Mlodzinski with the Yankees trailing 2-0. After a delay of 2½ minutes, Caballero took a called third strike that stranded a runner.
Advertisement
“He’s not allowed to do an inordinate amount of time looking down, trying to get the pitcher to cause a violation,” Wolcott told a pool reporter. “There’s no other hitter that gets in the box, takes the amount of the time that Caballero does while looking down, not making eye contact with the pitcher. Obviously, it’s caused a lot of problems in the past. It’s not going to be allowed anymore.”
Boone said MLB didn’t inform the Yankees before the game of the change in stance.
“It’s embarrassing,” he said.
Caballero claims he is being singled out.
“For everyone, it is eight seconds. For me was nine,” he said. “But now they just don’t want me to do my routine, so it’s kind of like tricky for me because it’s the way that I get settled, the way that I try to approach my at-bats.”
Advertisement
MORE BY
ADAM ZAGORIA
Ex-Rutgers, N.J. HS baseball star suffers ruptured testicle in MLB gameJul. 22, 2026, 12:09 p.m.
Caballero is concerned about giving pitchers control of the timing of pitches.
“If I get in the box and they have 16, 17 seconds left, they can hold the ball on me all that time and I’d be tied up,” he said.
The AP contributed reporting.
Read the original article on NJ.com. Add NJ.com as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
