NEW YORK — Aaron Judge stood on second base with his arms outstretched, his massive wingspan hard to miss. The next pitch from Max Scherzer was a changeup down in the zone that New York Yankees hitter Ben Rice spat on.
Judge repeated his gesture and then Rice drilled Scherzer’s changeup deep into the stands in right field, just missing a home run by sending it to the wrong side of the foul pole.
Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Ty France then jogged to the mound to alert Scherzer on what had been happening: Cody Bellinger was standing on first base reading Scherzer’s changeup grip in his glove and telegraphing it to Judge, who was relaying the information to the hitter.
Rice proceeded to foul off a fastball and curve from Scherzer before sending the 10th pitch of the at-bat, a four-seamer in the middle of the zone, into the right-field stands. The three-run shot left his bat at 109.4 m.p.h. and gave the Yankees the lead in the first inning of Sunday’s game.
The strategy and accompanying homer didn’t stand as the game-winner — the Blue Jays tied the contest before Scherzer eventually surrendered a third-inning double to Bellinger that put the Yankees up for good — but it did offer a strong dose of gamesmanship in New York’s 4-3 win over Toronto in front of 43,266 at Yankee Stadium.
“Yeah, they were relaying,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “They’re good at it. Max has got to be a little bit better. It was obvious in the changeups. Rice just missed the one — the foul homer.
“And it’s fair game,” continued Schneider. “The whole Major League Baseball knows the Yankees are good when they got something. I’m not the only one that’s going to say it. Maybe I’m the only one who’s going to say it publicly, but we got to do a better job of making sure we’re not giving anything away.”
France said Bellinger’s gesturing was “pretty obvious — guys at first don’t typically flap their arms like that,” meanwhile Scherzer noted this is an issue that’s plagued him in the past.
“That’s something we’re aware of,” Scherzer said. “You can you get my changeup out of my glove from first base. Something we’ve known. It’s not just the Yankees. We know across the league guys can do that. I’ve had multiple people tell me that so I thought I had addressed it, thought I had made the proper adjustment to get my glove in front of my face. But, clearly, I hadn’t.”
The right-hander added he’s got no problem with the Yankees relaying signs.
“That’s part of the game,” he said, repeating the sentence several times. “It’s 2025. Everybody knows it, we live it, that’s just part of the game.”
The Blue Jays (82-61) dropped two of three over the weekend series and now sit just two games ahead of the Yankees (80-63) in the American League East. This marked the final time these clubs will meet in the regular season, however a meeting in the playoffs is a real possibility.
Not to put the cart before the horse, as Schneider likes to say, but if the post-season began today, Toronto would receive a bye to the AL Division Series, where they’d play the winner of the wild-card matchup between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
Situations like Scherzer’s tipping of his changeup are an example of what teams need to be aware of heading into October, when everything becomes magnified. And, in that regard, Blue Jays infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa believes there’s a silver lining to be gleaned from Sunday.
“It gives us something to make some adjustments on,” said Kiner-Falefa, who played two seasons with the Yankees. “At this point of the year, it’s good for us to find out now rather than later. Hash that out and be good to go next time around.”
The Yankees grinded out at-bats against Scherzer, pushing his pitch count up and making him work right from the eventful first inning. The right-hander allowed four runs on three hits and four walks over 4.1 innings, with eight strikeouts on 93 pitches. He said the upper-back tightness that bothered him in his last start wasn’t an issue on Sunday.
Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette wasn’t in the lineup after cutting up his shin while sliding into home plate in Saturday’s game. Schneider said Bichette woke up sore but didn’t require any further imaging and will be reevaluated after the club’s off day on Monday.
Bichette’s presence was certainly missed as the Blue Jays had trouble coming up with big hits. After Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s hard-hit double plated the tying run in the third inning, the Blue Jays put runners on second and third with none out. However, Yankees left-hander Max Fried kept the ball in the infield, retiring Alejandro Kirk — batting in Bichette’s No. 4 spot — along with Ernie Clement and France to escape further damage.
The Blue Jays put two runners on in the eighth inning against Yankees right-hander Devin Williams but failed to score and, in the ninth, facing closer David Bednar, Myles Straw swung and missed on an impossible outside pitch during an ill-fated hit-and-run attempt that resulted in Nathan Lukes getting thrown out at second.
“Obviously the last possible outcome I’m thinking of,” said Schneider. “Part of the game plan coming into this series is we want to test their catcher. So, you give credit to [Austin] Wells for making a really good throw on a tough pitch.”
Such game-planning underlined the familiarity that the Blue Jays have with the Yankees, a team they beat in eight of 13 meetings this season.
“We played them well,” said Schneider. “I think that we match up well against them. It’s two teams that know each other really well and they made a couple more pitches and had a couple more big swings than we did this weekend.
“You’re trying to win every series, so you wish today was a little bit different,” he added. “But it’s 19 games left. I know there’s a little bit of extra oomph put into this weekend’s series against the Yankees, but every game for us is big. So, you got to enjoy the off day and come ready to play Tuesday. It’s 19 big games, which I think is good for this entire group going forward.”
