Michael Kay was beside himself.
He may play the part of an “impartial observer” on his daily radio show, but once he’s in the broadcast booth, that objectivity tends to take a back seat. That’s not to say the voice of the Yankees is a shameless homer, but more often than not, he backs the Bronx Bombers. It comes with the territory for many local broadcasters and is part of Kay’s M.O.
Still, he’s one of the best play-by-play announcers in the sport, even if Awful Announcing’s local announcer rankings rarely show it. But that has more to do with YES Network’s never-ending list of rotating analysts than it has to do with Kay.
But the recent uproar over Max Fried losing his no-hitter on a technicality? That has everything to do with Kay.
He was leading the charge against the Tampa Bay official scorer, furious that a borderline play was retroactively changed, effectively ending Fried’s no-hit bid with just six outs to go. Kay’s take: either you call it a hit or an error at the moment, or you don’t touch it at all. Waiting multiple innings to decide, especially in a potential no-hitter scenario, crossed the line in his book.
Paul Goldschmidt booted a ball as Chandler Simpson, dubbed the fastest man in baseball, raced down the line. Even if Goldschmidt had fielded it cleanly, Simpson probably would’ve beaten the throw. It would be close, but speed — and ultimately the ruling — favored the Rays.
The scorer changed the call from an error to a single. Fried’s no-hit bid was dead.
Official scorers can review and adjust rulings, even if it takes time. The system isn’t perfect, but it exists for a reason.
Still, Kay had a point.
Context matters. So does timing. Whether he was right about anything else? That’s up for debate.
“Well, you see the line, and no, you didn’t miss a batter,” Kay said on Easter Sunday. “I am absolutely flabbergasted, ladies and gentlemen. The official scorer at Steinbrenner Field, a man by the name of Bill Matthews, has changed the Simpson E3 into a hit while the Yankees were in the dugout. Just unfathomable. Either you call it when it happens, you don’t wait three innings to go by; it’s just unbelievable. And there’s Bill Matthews. And he’s going to have a lot of questions thrown at him, and he’s going to have to give some pretty good answers because I can’t believe that this is happening.”
“That’s the problem. It’s one of those situations you’ve got to stick with what you put up,” YES Network analyst and former Yankees’ third baseman Todd Frazier said. “And that’s the frustrating part right now. Max Fried is pitching an absolute gem; it was an error on Goldschmidt. You look back on it after the game, but right now, that’s something that you don’t do.
“Once you don’t call it a hit in the sixth inning, we said they’d probably change it to a hit if it was a legitimate hit,” Kays says. “But you almost have to stay with your call at that point. To take a no-hitter away from a guy after seven innings, with an official scoring change, unbelievable — just unbelievable.”
Frazier’s solution? Don’t post anything until the inning ends. Take two or three looks at it, then make the call.
“This is a tough one,” he admitted.
And while they were still breaking it down, Rays outfielder Jake Mangum laced a 3-1 pitch into center field for a clean single. Whether you believed it was an error or not, Fried’s no-hitter was officially done just five pitches into the bottom of the eighth inning.
As they watched the replay again, Frazier conceded that Simpson “most likely” would’ve beaten Fried and the throw to first base anyway.
We don’t think Kay will take much solace in that, though.
“All they gotta do is wait one batter,” he says. “And if Mangum had gotten a hit, then you say, ‘Oh, by the way, that E3 is changed to a hit.'”
But that’s not what happened. And Kay didn’t just shout into the void; he got called out. @ScoringChanges on X, an account run by a longtime NCAA and MiLB scorer/stringer, pushed back hard.
“You cannot talk in the sixth inning about how this should have been a hit and be surprised that an error was posted, and then get mad when this was correctly fixed between the seventh and eighth,” the account wrote.
“It really isn’t a great look for Michael,” they added, pointing out that Aaron Boone said postgame he thought it was a hit all along, something that made Kay’s rant look a little more performative in hindsight.
And for all the outrage, only one thing actually changed. The scorecard.