Domingo Germán ejected following illegal substance check

Tuesday night’s game between the Yankees and Blue Jays was already pretty silly following the Aaron Judge “look” controversy and the Toronto staff getting chirpy midgame with the Yankees’ Aaron Boone and Luis Rojas for coach positioning. That was just the appetizer, though.

Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán began to take the mound for the bottom of the fourth after three perfect innings to start the ballgame. But he was intercepted by the umpiring crew, who inspected his hands and found an illegal foreign substance. Germán was promptly ejected.

This is the second time in about a month that Germán got in trouble for sticky stuff. Back on April 15th, he was checked by the Twins, and the crew let him stay in that game. This time, Germán was not so fortunate.

And yes, it seems pretty clear that this was no accident:

Much like Michael Pineda with pine tar on the 2014 Yankees, Germán kept going back to the well after being told that he couldn’t. It’s pretty foolish really (not just for his sake but for the team’s as well), but unfortunately not that surprising coming from a guy like Germán.

Even beyond the stakes of the current game, where the bullpen now needs to cover more innings than expected, Germán will likely now face a 10-game suspension and the Yankees won’t be able to replace his roster spot (as the Mets and Max Scherzer just demonstrated). The answer, for now, to who Luis Severino will replace in the rotation has been answered, and it’s not Clarke Schmidt or Jhony Brito. Instead, it’s Germán.

Great. Wonderful. Fantastic.

Update

Oh, and Germán’s midgame replacement, Ian Hamilton, suffered a groin injury shortly after stepping in, too. Because of course!

Update 2

If you have any interest in Germán’s defense or the umpiring crew’s rationale for ejection, below are the postgame thoughts from both.