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MLB has clearly seen enough of Jose Caballero’s cat-and-mouse games with the pitch clock in the batter’s box. Umpires hit the New York Yankees infielder with an automatic strike in Wednesday’s 5-3, 10-inning loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the opener of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. Afterward, crew chief Adrian Johnson said the crew wasn’t acting on its own.
“He’s been warned all season, and we were instructed not to warn him,” Johnson told the pool reporter after the game. “We were instructed to violate him. That’s what it is. It’s a violation.”
The instruction came down after Monday night, when Caballero’s routine set off a benches-clearing scuffle with Pirates reliever Dennis Santana. The routine is familiar by now. Caballero steps in, drops his eyes and waits until the last possible instant to look up, hoping it throws off the pitcher’s timing.
“Major League Baseball stepped in and they wanted (it) enforced,” Johnson said.
A clearly annoyed Yankees manager Aaron Boone said that the team was not informed of any changes prior to the game in his postgame press conference.
Neither was Caballero, who talked to reporters between games of the doubleheader and he rejected the premise entirely. To him, nothing about his routine is deception, because deception requires a trick, and he does the same thing every time.
“Deceiving kind of means that you’re trying to trick someone, and I am not trying to trick someone, because I do the same thing over and over,” Caballero said. “You can check my last 50 at-bats and see if I do it the same or not. Or check maybe 100 at-bats, or 150.”
During the game, YES Network microphones picked up home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott telling Caballero he doesn’t get to spend three or four seconds (settling into) the box anymore.
Wolcott explained afterward what he meant.
“There is no other hitter that gets in the box (and) takes the amount of time that Caballero does while looking down, not making eye contact with the pitcher,” Wolcott said. “Obviously, it’s caused a lot of problems in the past. It’s not going to be allowed anymore.”
The rule Wolcott enforced has been on the books for years. MLB’s Pace of Game Procedures spell it out: “Conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position in violation of these Regulations shall be considered circumvention.” Umpires issue a warning for deceptive behavior. “If the batter continues to engage in such conduct during the game, the umpire shall assess a Pitch Clock Violation(i.s., automatics strike.”
Asked whether Wednesday’s call fell under that deception clause, and whether the crew believes Caballero intends to deceive pitchers, Johnson said, “all of the above.”
USA TODAY reached out to MLB for comment.
Caballero used up his warning weeks ago. Plate umpire Steven Jaschinski told him in Toronto on June 14 that the next one would cost him a strike, and Boone took it up with MLB officials the next day. Caballero didn’t hide his frustration then. “They’ve been changing the rule without any warning ahead,” he said.
He’s kept at it anyway, because it works. Hitters have to be in the box and alert to the pitcher with eight seconds left on the clock that runs 18 seconds with runners on and 15 with the bases empty. Last September in Houston, Caballero milked a violation into a bases-loaded walk that forced in a run.
“If you get frustrated, I’m winning,” Caballero said after the benches cleared Monday night.
On Wednesday, the frustration was his. What bothered him most was the timing. The league changed how the rule would be enforced, he said, and told no one in a Yankees uniform until the violation was already on the scoreboard.
And he feels singled out.
“I’ve seen other guys do (things) deceiving the pitchers that I actually don’t do, but they don’t call it on them,” Caballero said. “They just call it on me. I guess, like I said they (are) just picking on me.”
He is not alone though. An MLB executive pointed out that Willson Contreras ran a version of this play in 2023, the clock’s first season. The Cardinals catcher baited Boston closer Kenley Jensen into a pair of quick-pitch violations by looking ready to hit while keeping one foot out of the box. MLB sent out a memo to all 30 clubs that deceiving a pitcher could bring a warning, an automatic strike and even club discipline.
The pest routine is part of Caballero’s game. A seventh-round pick out of Chipola College, who debuted in Seattle in 2023, he has built his career on the margins. The Panama native led the American League in stolen bases in 2024 and all of baseball in 2025, swiping 49 bags last season while posting a career-best 12.7% walk rate. He’s a career .228 hitter who compensates by playing nearly everywhere on the field and turning every edge, real or imagined, into offense.
