Aaron Boone's explosive ejection vs Orioles for naught as Yankees go down quietly

Another early shower for New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, and his team had to complete the series finale against the Baltimore Orioles without him. The topic at hand? Balls and strikes, of course.

The Yanks were put in a tough spot in the first inning when Anthony Volpe booted a ground ball (but it was somehow ruled a single) that would've been the third out. Starting pitcher Clarke Schmidt would've been out of the frame after just 12 pitches.

But guess what happened? Two laborious at-bats that resulted in walks and ran up Schmidt's pitch count. He then battled Austin Hays, who popped out to first, to get out of the bases-loaded jam.

But at that point he was already at 29 pitches -- 17 more than he should've thrown. One could blame Volpe, but Boone opted to blame home plate umpire Edwin Moscoco, who the skipper felt wasn't calling a fair game.

Schmidt didn't get a number of borderline calls in the previous at-bats, which also played a role in the elevated pitch count ... but Moscoco was at least consistent. Boone didn't care. He was absolutely apoplectic and blew a gasket.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone gets ejected vs Orioles on Thursday

Boone now leads MLB with four ejections on the year, and that's three in the span of 10 days (he got tossed against the Blue Jays on May 15 and then again against the Reds on May 21.

We'll hear more from Boone in the postgame, but it appears as if Schmidt getting none of the below calls was the point of contention. Moscoco refused to to engage, further testing Boone's patience. As Boone left the field, he got an applause from the Yankee Stadium crowd. But just a day ago everyone was fed up with him!

That's life in New York.

In the fourth inning, Moscoco gave a call to Orioles pitcher Kyle Gibson that was much farther off the plate than any of Schmidt's pitches that were called balls. And that wasn't all.

That's the definition of inconsistent umpiring and calling an unfair game. The hitter-friendly ump only lived up to the billing for the O's bats, not the Yankees'.

In the end, it didn't really matter. The Yankees lost 3-1, and it wouldn't have mattered if Schmidt was able to get an extra inning on the evening had he saved those wasted bullets. The Yankees made two official errors (three if you count the "single" to Volpe in the first), got six runners on base against Kyle Gibson, and finished with three hits on the night.

When your manager gets tossed like that, it's supposed to light a fire under the team. The Yankees didn't respond, though. They got a run back in the ninth, but that was it. Gibson tossed seven scoreless and that was all the O's needed.

Five innings of one-run ball from Schmidt wasted. Bullpen burned (Jimmy Cordero, Wandy Peralta, who allowed two earned runs, Clay Holmes, who allowed the hit that drove in those runs, and Albert Abreu were all used ahead of the weekend series against the Padres).

They followed up Wednesday night's loss in the worst possible way and will now have to regroup with against desperate Padres, who are in the middle of their east coast road trip. Joe Musgrove, Michael Wacha and Yu Darvish are on deck for that one so ... yeah, the Yankees are going to have to erase this one from their memory real fast.