Why Yankees’ Aaron Boone wasn’t happy with the umpires

Yankees manager Aaron Boone explains his tense conversation with plate umpire during a crucial moment in a 3-1 loss to the Rays at Yankee Stadium.

NEW YORK — Yankees manager Aaron Boone had a tense talk with plate umpire Jerry Layne.

The Boone walked away, turned around and came back for more.

Nothing changed.

After the Yankees’ 3-1 loss to the Rays at Yankee Stadium on Thursday, Boone wasn’t particularly pleased with it.

Boone said he was upset umpires gave Giancarlo Stanton a double instead of a triple after a mix-up during an eighth-inning rally.

“Unfortunately, that seems to always be a default: Just make it a double,” Boone said. “Which was what I was upset about. How consequential it was, I don’t know what. But I feel like in those spots, I feel like, let’s grind a little harder. Especially Giancarlo’s striding it out and, clearly, would have been at third base. So I just wish they’d grind down a little harder on those situations where we just always default to the safe, automatic double, which didn’t seem to be the case at all in that situation.”

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The whole thing was odd.

With two outs and Aaron Hicks on second base, Stanton hit a liner down the right field line. It hit the yellow foul marking on the wall in the corner.

First base umpire Greg Joyce called it a home run and everybody was confused.

Then the umpires convened and called it a foul ball because, according to Layne, they knew that way Boone could challenge it or go for a crew chief review.

“Replay just told us what we did,” Joyce said. “It said that it was a fair ball instead of a foul, like we thought. We came out of the huddle. Originally, Greg thought it was a home run and then he said I htink it was foul because it hit the wall in foul. He goes, ‘I’m trying to get some help here.’ So he clearly didn’t see it. We weren’t 100 percent.”

Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on Facebook.