Judge gets last laugh, powers Yankees past Blue Jays in heated clash

TORONTO – John Schneider is savvy enough to understand the weight his words would carry within the steaming kettle of emotion Aaron Judge’s sketchy sideway looks have created around this Toronto Blue Jays-New York Yankees series. So when he was asked about baseball’s murky grey zone around subterfuge and where he placed the line between fair and foul, the answer was telling of where he feels the partition lies, and how he feels his divisional rivals crossed it.

“The integrity of the game is so important,” Schneider told an overflowing media gathering in his office. “People are always trying to look for competitive advantages. If you're doing things in plain sight, you have to be able to correct them and you have to be willing to have the consequences be what they are. If it's done fairly, that's part of the game. Everyone's looking to help their teammates. Everyone's looking to pick up on tendencies. Anything that's happening on the field in the right way, totally fair game.”

The unsaid implication, of course, is that the Yankees were doing things in plain sight in need of correction, a message reinforced hours later when words were exchanged between the Blue Jays dugout and third base coach Luis Rojas, who positioned himself outside the coach's box, and when New York starter Domingo German was ejected in the fourth inning after a foreign-substance check.

“It’s the stickiest hand I’ve ever felt,” home plate umpire and crew chief James Hoye told a pool reporter.

In that way, the Yankees not only again crossed the line the day after both Judge and Jake Bauers were caught by Sportsnet broadcast cameras glancing in the direction of the base coach opposite them during eighth-inning at-bats, they totally stomped it. Aaron Boone’s turn playing the innocently accused pre-game Tuesday – “I think most of the people in the know, know that there's nothing there,” he said of the sideway looks – rang all the more hollow after.

No matter, baseball games aren’t won or lost on the moral high ground, which made Judge’s go-ahead, two-run homer in the eighth inning of a 6-3 win all the more painful. After German spun three perfect innings, the Blue Jays had fought back from a 3-0 deficit to tie the game in a three-run fifth, only to end up dropping a second straight before a crowd of 35,112.

Worse, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., tweaked his right knee fielding a bunt in the eighth and didn’t take the field in the ninth. He’ll undergo an MRI “to see what’s going on,” said Schneider. “Hopefully it’s good news, obviously."

The Blue Jays could use some after a wild game capped an even wilder day which included conversations about Monday’s affair with Major League Baseball for both clubs. Based on what’s known, officials don’t believe a major rules violation occurred, although the positioning of base coaches ended up becoming a focal point.

What the Blue Jays seemed to believe is that Yankees base coaches Travis Chapman at first and Rojas at third were positioning themselves well outside the coaches' boxes in order to peer in at reliever Jay Jackson during the eighth inning. Jackson may have been a bit sloppy with his glove, leaving it wide open with no one on base, and the coaches could perhaps have picked up his grip and relayed it to the batter, which would explain all the sideways peeps.

Relaying grips under those circumstances is generally considered fair game – it’s on the pitching team to protect its pitches – but not if, as Schneider put it, “things are being picked up from people that aren't in places they should be.”

Asked if Yankees coaches were a focal point, Schneider said: “I think every team has their guard up on that. It's easy to look at a runner at second when you're hitting, tough to look into the dugout. Probably a little bit easier to look at a coach. There are boxes on the field for a reason. When it's a glaring 30 feet where you're not in that spot, you kind of put two and two together a little bit.”

Hence, an extreme Blue Jays vigilance all night, with pitching coach Pete Walker getting fired up when Rojas strayed from his spot in the third inning Tuesday, leading to a colourful series of exchanges – including Schneider seemingly telling someone believed to be Brad Wilkerson to “shut up, fat boy” – and eventually a lengthy discussion with umpires. 

“It's two competitive teams, you're not pleased with the way everything has shaking out the last 24 hours, right,” said Schneider. “It's people being competitive and Rojas responded how he did and we responded how we did.”

Adding to the intrigue was German getting tossed after throwing three perfect innings to start the game by the same umpiring crew that during a start last month against the Minnesota Twins, twice asked the righty to wash off a sticky substance off his hand.

That he wasn’t ejected then led Twins manager Rocco Baldelli to blow up at the crew and get tossed instead, although German didn’t get the same runway this time and is now subject to an automatic 10-game suspension. All four umps checked his hand and “we all had the same opinion,” said Hoye. “Shiny, extremely sticky, and it’s the worst hand we’ve ever felt during a game.”

The Blue Jays proceeded to load the bases that inning but came up empty when Whit Merrifield lined out to centre against Ron Marinaccio to end the frame. A Kevin Kiermarier homer, Bo Bichette RBI double and Guerrero RBI single in the fifth knotted the game up but they couldn’t break through after that. 

Guerrero’s spot came up in the ninth as the tying run, but Santiago Espinal hit in his place instead, grounding into a double play to end the game.

Judge’s homer came after Kevin Gausman, strong in allowing three runs over seven innings, had retired him three times, two via strikeout. Erik Swanson took over in the eighth and hung an 0-1 breaking ball crushed 448-feet to centre, Judge’s eyes locked straight ahead the whole time.

Gausman tried to keep himself out of “the extra-curriculars,” although he described the early-outing interruptions for all the arguments as “kind of annoying.” Still, it all made for emotional baseball between “two really good teams that like to kind of jab back and forth each other," he added. “There's definitely kind of a little bit of a dislike and so that adds to the fuel. We're trying to win the division. They won it last year. And so, we're really trying to obviously win baseball games.”

As are the Yankees, who the past couple of nights have succeeded at it, too, bent or broke rules along the way be damned.