Yankees caught Mariners closer tipping pitches in wild comeback: ‘Weren’t making it very discreet’
The Yankees’ biggest comeback win of the season came with a little bit of help.
According to Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh, Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz was tipping his pitches when the Yankees tagged him for two runs in the bottom of the ninth before going on to win, 6-5, in 10 innings.
“He was tipping it every time [with a runner] at second base,’’ Raleigh said.
Video showed Yankee baserunners, including Cody Bellinger, at second base motioning with their arms when Muñoz was going to throw a slider.
It led to Ben Rice taking a slider outside the strike zone with a full count to load the bases for Austin Wells, who laid off back-to-back sliders- one of which was a called strike- before he tied the game by driving in two runs with a single on a four-seam fastball.
“Obviously, they weren’t making it very discreet,” Raleigh said of the Yankees’ alert system from second base. “It’s part of the game. It’s our job. We should have known about that going into the series. They made it really hard there at the end.”
Oddly, Raleigh did not tell Muñoz about his tell during the fateful inning.
“You try to do as much as you can without trying to distract him from what’s happening at the plate,’’ Raleigh said. “That’s something we will have to figure out [in] the next couple days, for sure.”
Seattle manager Dan Wilson disputed the notion that Muñoz was giving anything away.
“I don’t think that’s the case,’’ Wilson said. “I think we got ourselves into some tough counts and they took advantage of it.”
It was part of a rough latter part of the game for Seattle and Muñoz, as well as Raleigh, who not only wasn’t able to frame what should have been a game-ending called third strike on a Muñoz changeup to Wells in the ninth, but he later missed the tag when Anthony Volpe slid around him on Aaron Judge’s game-winning sacrifice fly in the 10th.
— With AP