What do you think Judge was doing?

We all know the story. Judge was glancing in the direction of the Yankees’ dugout and then hit a home run.

If it is cheating, I would have thought other Yankees’ batters would be doing the same thing. Why just Judge (like he needs the help)? I’m sure Sportsnet has looked through every other at-bat of the game to see if anyone else did it.

For his part, Judge said:

There was a lot of chirping from our dugout, which I didn’t really like in a situation where it’s a 6-0 game and Boonie got tossed. I was trying to save Boonie by calling timeout, like, ‘Hey, hold up here. Let me work here.’ I was kind of trying to see who was chirping in the dugout; it’s 6-0 and Boonie got tossed. Let’s just go to work. I’m kind of looking, like, ‘Who’s still talking here?”

I don’t know, plausible, I guess. I can understand Judge wanting the bench to shut up. It must be hard to keep concentration on batting when the bench is complaining. Maybe he was interested in getting the umpire to focus on the game too. Both sides had issues with the plate umpire at various times.

On the Jays side, John Schneider said:

It’s kind of odd that a hitter would be looking in that direction. He’s obviously looking in that direction for a reason. I think we’ll dive into that a little bit more tonight and tomorrow, and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to not make ourselves susceptible to tendencies, locations, pitches or anything like that.

Yesterday’s Umpire Scorecard. Pretty bad, but very evenly bad: