The Yankees took three of four from the Blue Jays in Toronto and the MVP of the series was none other than manager Aaron Boone.
The series was rife with drama from the start and New York’s polarizing skipper put on a master class. He pushed all the right pitching buttons. The bullpen management was top notch.
Throw in a powerful series from Aaron Judge, and the Yankees continue to be in a good position. They are far better than third in the AL East and 6.5 games behind the first-place Rays.
Some takeaways:
Boone’s master managing. This wasn’t an easy series for the Yankees by any means, especially after a tough four-game split with the Rays in the Bronx. Even so, Boone took the right risks and guided his team to three of four wins. Even better is he had to manage his bullpen on the fly on Tuesday and still managed to make all the right calls.
Jhony Brito has a 10.57 ERA in the first inning, so Boone used him as a bulk arm behind opener Jimmy Cordero on Monday. Brito pitched 5 1/3 innings out of the bullpen and allowed four runs, but only one was earned. He easily could have pitched a clean six if Gleyber Torres fielded an easy double play grounder cleanly.
Boone did it again on Tuesday after Domingo German was ejected for sticky stuff. Ryan Weber pitched 2 1/3 shutdown innings and escaped a bases loaded-nobody out jam Thursday. Albert Abreu also got some big strikeouts. We’ll soon see what other tricks Boonie has up his sleeve, especially with German serving a 10-game suspension.
Court is back in session. Judge had as great a series as anyone could have hoped, slugging four total home runs. Three of them were absolute tanks to dead center too. Across all four games, Judge hit .428 with seven RBI and literally left his mark on the Rogers Centre.
The Yankee captain is a big reason why his team is 7-3 in its last ten games, too. He’s been off the injured list for exactly that long and is batting .324 with six total homers. On the year, Judge is batting 12 home runs with 28 RBI.
He isn’t on the same pace as last year’s MVP season, but who cares? In terms of producing and showing up for his team, Judge has picked up right where he left off.
Where’s Vlady? In case you haven’t been paying attention, Blue Jays star slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. really doesn’t like the Yankees. So much that in the three-game set in the Bronx last month, he left his mark and hit .363 with a pair of homers in the series.
On his home field, however, Guerrero was practically a non-factor. He hit only .250 with three RBI. This isn’t entirely his fault, given he tweaked his knee that same game and exited early. Guerrero did not play Wednesday and had a pinch-hit sac fly Thursday.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that no matter how much Guerrero tries to build a blood rivalry between his Jays and the Yankees, it just isn’t there. There is no long, drawn-out history between both teams. If anything, they just intensely dislike each other.
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