Yankees Win All Kinds of Challenges, Lose Baseball Game

Aaron Boone's team was perfect with their challenges but it was all for naught.

Yankees suffered their first loss of the year on Monday night. | Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

The good news for the Yankees is that they showcased a team-wide understanding of the strike zone on Monday night against the Mariners by successfully challenging five different pitches. The bad news, of course, is they eventually lost the game when Cal Raleigh authored a game-winning pinch-hit single in the bottom of the ninth to give Seattle a 2-1 victory. Going 5-for-5 on ABS reviews was enough to earn the Yankees the second top headline on ESPN.com this morning but one would think they would have rather moved their actual record to 4-0.

Below are highlights of the challenges in question, which led to viewers hearing home plate umpire Mike Estabrook's name more than often during the broadcast.

The Yankees were 5/5 in ABS challenges today.

Umpire had a rough day 😭

pic.twitter.com/ASTbaXMQ2u

— Baseball (@mlbelites_) March 31, 2026

Eventually there was some barking from Yankees dugout amid all of the challenges. That led to Estabrook telling them he didn't want to hear another word. This came after one of his rulings was negated when evidence showed that a pitch was actually .1 of an inch outside the zone and therefore a ball.

Yankees are chirping at home plate umpire Mike Estabrook as he keeps calling low strikes and the Yankees keep overturning them https://t.co/S9LZ6suzFz pic.twitter.com/d64yy04czx

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) March 31, 2026

One can understand the frustrations from both sides here. Aaron Boone's club was forced to keep challenging because they were harmed by a technically improper call over and over again. Estabrook is watching world-class athletes spin the ball at insane velocity and trusting his eyes hundreds of times on borderline calls. When the difference is a fraction of an inch upon further review it probably stings a bit more because it's a hard job.

Through four games the Yankees are 10-for-11 on their challenges. But they also lost the game in which they raked up half their successful challenges. It is very hard at this point to understand just how much being good at challenges helps teams win actual games. For my money the most helpful stat is Net WPA by team, which you can find here.

The Yankees are second in baseball and are 3-1. Only Baltimore is better and they are 2-2. The Twins, Giants, Athletics, White Sox and Red Sox are all in the top-third of the league in this stat and have a combined 5-15 record. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change over the year and if there's any correlation at all between being good at this specific thing and winning with regularity.

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