CINCINNATI — The Yankees escaped disaster on Friday night after avoiding what could have been their second sticky-stuff ejection in four days.
Before he took the mound for the bottom of the fifth inning in the Yankees’ 6-2 win over the Reds, Clarke Schmidt was inspected by third-base umpire Nestor Ceja, who found something on the back of the pitcher’s left hand and had the rest of the umpiring crew check it out.
The issue, according to Schmidt, was the black fur on the inside of his glove, which had mixed with sweat and rosin throughout the night and built up on the back of his left wrist. Because the residue was not sticky, according to crew chief Brian O’Nora, the umpires asked Schmidt to go wash it off, which he did and then was allowed to continue pitching.
Reds manager David Bell was then ejected for arguing with O’Nora, upset that Schmidt was not thrown out of the game.
“It is our discretion,” O’Nora told a pool reporter. “[Ceja] noticed something just a little tacky. … It wasn’t shiny. It wasn’t dark like pine tar. It was that fuzz from the inside part of his glove, I think. As a crew we told him to go wash it off. He washed it off [and] nothing was on his hand. It wasn’t sticky and it wasn’t a foreign substance.”
Said Schmidt: “I have nothing to hide.”
Still, it was an anxious few minutes for the Yankees, who saw Domingo German get ejected from his start on Tuesday night in Toronto for having a sticky substance on his right hand, which has left them playing a man down as he serves his 10-game suspension.
“You don’t want to know what’s going through my head,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But obviously we need to avoid that at all costs and make sure we’re holding each other to account all the time.”
The scene was also reminiscent of the April 15 game against the Twins, when German was asked to wash his hands off because he had excessive rosin and then was allowed to stay in the game, which Twins manager Rocco Baldelli got tossed for arguing.
After being cleared on Friday, Schmidt tossed a fifth scoreless inning before his night ended when he gave up back-to-back hits to start the sixth. Both of those runs later came in to score, but it was still one of Schmidt’s better starts of the season — albeit with some controversy mixed in.
“I get it, the league is hypersensitive about it right now,” Schmidt said of cracking down on foreign-substance checks. “Obviously you don’t want to get thrown out of the game when something like that happens, especially when we’re playing a man down.
“Your heart starts beating a little quicker because you don’t want to affect the team where they have to pitch down another pitcher. But other than that, I was OK with the result.”