Aaron Boone Reacts to Yankees Winning All 5 ABS Challenges in Loss to Cal Raleigh, Mariners

Even though the New York Yankees suffered their first loss of the season in Monday's 2-1 defeat against the Seattle Mariners, they did have a perfect night using the automated ball-strike challenge system,

After the Yankees won all five of their challenges in the series opener, manager Aaron Boone responded positively during the postgame press conference to his players knowing when to signal for a challenge.

"Really good job by the guys. When you have that kind of success rate, it's not going to be like that every night. But I thought every one was obviously warranted, and a couple in some key spots to give us a chance to build an inning. We just weren't able to build much offensively tonight."

Yankees vs. Mariners 03/30/2026

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The number of challenges is more remarkable considering all five of them came in the first four innings. All of them were Yankees batters challenging called strikes.

Seattle finished the game with zero challenges.

Boone and home plate umpire Mark Estabrook did get into a brief verbal exchange at one point, with the Yankees skipper staying in the dugout to voice his complaints, after Jazz Chisholm struck out to end the top of the fourth. The at-bat started with a slider that was originally called a strike before being reversed after a challenge.

"Those are razor-thin pitches sometimes," Boone said. "You don't want to always have to be challenging. But good on the guys for just hammering the strike zone right now."

Estabrook can take some comfort in knowing he didn't have the toughest day behind the plate for an umpire so far this season. C.B. Bucknor had six calls overturned by ABS in the Cincinnati Reds' 6-5 win over the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.

Through the first six days of the MLB season, the success rate on challenges is at 55 percent (124 calls overturned out of 227 challenges).

The Yankees' seven overturned calls on challenges by hitters are tied with the Reds for most in MLB. José Caballero, who had two calls overturned on Monday, is tied with Roman Anthony and Kyle Schwarber for second-most challenges by a hitter (three).

Seattle won the game on Cal Raleigh's walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth. The two teams will play the second game of their series at T-Mobile Park on Tuesday at 9:40 p.m. ET