Yankees wouldn't mind some normalcy after heated series with Blue Jays

CINCINNATI — The start of a three-game series against the Reds on Friday night marked an emotional step down for the Yankees after the two series preceding it.

Not that facing the Reds, 19-24 coming into the weekend, guarantees anything. It’s still the major leagues, and bad pitching, bad defense and poor approaches at the plate are more likely than not going to be punished regardless of the opposition.  

But after the four-game war against the Rays and four more testy games against the Blue Jays, Yankees players and staff would only be human if they exhaled a bit after getting out of Toronto.

"I'm glad we're leaving," Aaron Boone said.

What to take from the series, in which the Yankees won three of four games at Rogers Centre?

First, the Yankees' rivalry with the Blue Jays officially turned red-hot. While not yet containing the mutual enmity that exists in the rivalry with the Rays — and part of that is stoked by the Yankees organization’s almost unhealthy obsession with how Tampa Bay does business, particularly when it comes to analytics — it’s certainly getting there with Toronto. This past series raised the temperature considerably.

Yankees players and staff, especially the players, were irate at the suggestion that came from some in the Blue Jays' dugout that Aaron Judge had done something illegal when he glanced toward his dugout during an eighth-inning at-bat Monday that ended with him hitting a 462-foot homer.

Judge acknowledged not being “happy” about the insinuation of rule-breaking on his part but would not cop to it providing any extra motivation for him or the team.

“No, we were focused on what we can control between the lines,” Judge said after his team hung on for a 4-2 victory Thursday. “We did a pretty good blocking out all the noise and distractions the whole series. We went out there and took care of our business.”

But Aaron Hicks, who had three hits Thursday, gave at least a partial voice to what had been roiling in the clubhouse since Monday.

“Yeah,” Hicks said of players being perhaps a little bit angry during the last three games of the series. “For us to win the first game and then cause so much drama that they’re [the Blue Jays] focused on other things besides winning ballgames . . . In order for us to be able to compete to the best of our ability, we have to focus on us and focus on winning and focus on what we need to do to win games.”

Multiple clubhouse personnel acknowledged that the Yankees did indeed have something on Jay Jackson, who himself acknowledged later that he was tipping his pitches. But indications are it involved nothing more than the kind of code-breaking all 30 teams attempt when it comes to gaining an edge, one that does not involve the use of technology, which is prohibited by Major League Baseball. This was the result of sloppiness on the part of the victimized team when it comes to protecting such information.

And, as one Blue Jays person said Tuesday regarding the Jackson slider that Judge torpedoed to dead center: “How about not throwing one down the [expletive] middle to a guy who hit 62 home runs last year?”

The series also involved one of the silliest  controversies in recent years when the Blue Jays expressed “concern” to MLB regarding  the Yankees' first- and third-base coaches — Travis Chapman and Luis Rojas — not staying in the coaches’ boxes. Not one first- or third-base coach in the sport, including those with the Blue Jays, stays inside those lines, which could be more accurately described as suggestion boxes.  

Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker twice during the series, on Tuesday and then on Thursday, took to screaming from his dugout at Rojas. Boone  yelled across the field at Walker on Thursday, calling him “crazy,” among other things.

An apt description of the series overall. The next one between the clubs, which isn’t until Sept. 19 at the Stadium, really can’t come soon enough.  

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.