ATLANTA — Yankees rookie infielder Jorbit Vivas never was in danger of being benched Friday night after his embarrassing baserunning mistake in the third inning of a 7-3 loss to the Braves.
Pulling Vivas from the game, in fact, never crossed manager Aaron Boone’s mind.
“No,” Boone said on Saturday. “That’s not one of those.”
With the Braves leading 3-0, Vivas was thrown out at third base after tagging up on Cody Bellinger’s two-on, one-out flyball to deep right that was caught by Ronald Acuna Jr., on the edge of the warning track about five feet from the foul line.
Acura caught the ball facing away from third base, then whipped a 301-foot, on-the-fly throw that gunned down Vivas because he slowed up as he approached third with Braves third baseman Nacho Alvarez playing possum and then ignored third-base coach Luis Rojas yelling and signaling slide.
Vivas’ punishment was a stern simple massage from Boone:
“That can’t happen again.”
Why not bench Vivas?
That’s how a mistake like that often would have been handled when his grandfather Ray Boone (1948-60) and father Bob Boone (1972-90) played in the majors, and maybe even at times during his playing career (1997-2009).
Why Boone didn’t consider benching Vivas?
“It’s not a case of somebody dogging it down the line,” he said. “That’s a case of pulling up incorrectly, a mistake that obviously can’t happen. But, no … If we’re making over and over mental mistakes and things like that, but to me that in that moment, for a kid that plays his butt off all the time, that’s not a situation (to pull Vivas from the game).
“That’s a conversation. That’s a little bit of an embarrassing moment that you hope you learn from and grow from, but you’d be pulling guys a lot of time for different things and that one doesn’t rise to it when it happens.”
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Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected].
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