ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s a actuality that the Yankees and Blue Jays completed the season with the identical 94-68 report.
It is also a actuality that within the ALDS and for a lot of the regular-season sequence, the 2 groups didn’t appear to be they had been in the identical weight class, with the Blue Jays thumping the Yankees time and time once more on the way in which to claiming the American League pennant.
Nonetheless, Aaron Boone indicated Monday that the hole between the Yankees and Blue Jays is smaller than it could appear.
“We ended with an identical information final yr — I don’t need to low cost that they kicked our ass final yr,” Boone mentioned on the winter conferences. “Don’t take it out of context. I’d say the hole is [small]. We had the very same report. However they clearly had been a fantastic staff final yr, an eyelash away from successful a world championship.
“They definitely proved to be the higher staff this yr, and hopefully we are able to shut that hole and cross them and others this yr.”
The Blue Jays, courtesy of successful the season sequence 8-5 over the Yankees, owned the tiebreaker for the AL East, which gave them a bye and home-field benefit into the ALDS, the place they crushed the Yankees by a mixed rating of 34-19.
Boone was requested how the Yankees may shut that hole.
“Nicely, I imply, enjoying higher in opposition to them is the actual easy reply,” he mentioned. “On the finish of the day, we ended up knotted with them [in the division]. However within the face to face, they kicked our butt, and particularly in these summer time months. In that stretch the place we had been scuffling just a little bit, they beat us up, together with a four-game sweep up there, and that clearly ended up actually hurting us.”
Whereas the Yankees have had a reasonably quiet begin to their offseason — Trent Grisham accepting the qualifying supply, choosing up the membership choice on Tim Hill and re-signing Ryan Yarbrough — the Blue Jays have already got made a splash in signing Dylan Stop and will make one other with an enormous bat like Kyle Tucker.
“They’re now the defending American League champs,” GM Brian Cashman mentioned. “We now have to search out our method to take that again from them and, on the similar time, be higher than everyone else within the league.”
Boone had not but opined on the most recent chapter of the Sonny Grey saga, so he was requested concerning the pitcher’s current feedback that becoming a member of the Pink Sox made it “straightforward to hate the Yankees” after he “by no means wished to go” to The Bronx again in 2017.
“He’s in Boston now — he’s not supposed to love us anyway,” Boone mentioned with a smile. “That being mentioned, I’ve at all times actually preferred Sonny, gotten alongside nicely with him. If he’ll boost the rivalry just a little, there’s nothing flawed with that.
“However I used to be just a little stunned how deep he went.”
Cashman claimed Sunday that Grey had instructed anybody who would hear that he wished to be a Yankee, which led to them buying him on the 2017 commerce deadline.
Grey then continued to battle in 2018 — Boone’s first season as supervisor — and didn’t inform Cashman till after the commerce deadline how a lot he hated it in New York.
“I do know it wasn’t definitely one of the best cease for him, however a type of most likely necessary steps alongside what’s been a very good profession for him,” Boone mentioned.
Anthony Volpe had been at Yankee Stadium “just about day by day” rehabbing his surgically repaired left shoulder till final week, when he left for Tampa, in keeping with Boone. Volpe will proceed his rehab on the membership’s spring coaching facility and be there by means of the beginning of camp.
“Rehab’s going nicely,” Boone mentioned. “He’s making the correct of progress.”
Preston Claiborne, who spent final season as an assistant pitching coach, will transfer to the bullpen to switch longtime coach Mike Harkey, whose contract the Yankees didn’t renew.
