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ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s a actuality that the Yankees and Blue Jays completed the season with the identical 94-68 document.
It is also a actuality that within the ALDS and for a lot of the regular-season sequence, the 2 groups didn’t seem like they have 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 might appear.
“We ended with an identical information final 12 months — I don’t need to low cost that they kicked our ass final 12 months,” 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 document. However they clearly have been an ideal staff final 12 months, an eyelash away from successful a world championship.
“They definitely proved to be the higher staff this 12 months, and hopefully we are able to shut that hole and move them and others this 12 months.”
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 might shut that hole.
“Effectively, I imply, enjoying higher towards them is the true 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 have 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 provide, selecting up the membership possibility 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 a giant bat like Kyle Tucker.
“They’re now the defending American League champs,” GM Brian Cashman mentioned. “We’ve got to search out our approach 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 newest chapter of the Sonny Grey saga, so he was requested concerning the pitcher’s latest feedback that becoming a member of the Crimson Sox made it “simple 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 all the time actually appreciated Sonny, gotten alongside effectively with him. If he’ll boost the rivalry just a little, there’s nothing incorrect with that.
“However I used to be just a little stunned how deep he went.”
Cashman claimed Sunday that Grey had informed 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 wrestle 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 the very best cease for him, however a kind of most likely essential steps alongside what’s been a very good profession for him,” Boone mentioned.
Anthony Volpe had been at Yankee Stadium “just about on daily basis” rehabbing his surgically repaired left shoulder till final week, when he left for Tampa, based on 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 effectively,” 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.
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