The New York Yankees are going out of their way to have a chip on their shoulder for the American League Division Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone took issue with a comment Toronto analyst Buck Martinez made about New York during a broadcast in September.
“The Yankees, they’re not a good team,” Martinez said. “I don’t care what their record is.”
Per ESPN’s Jorge Castillo, Boone referenced the incident during his news conference on Friday.
“Contrary to some thoughts up here, we’re a really good team,” Boone said. “I know Buck had some thoughts. That’s all I was responding to. He’s wrong. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to go play, and we’ve got to go perform, as everyone does this time of year. We feel really good about our team. We’re playing well. All that’s in the past now. We’ve got to play well moving forward.”
Both teams are good, and the Blue Jays are aware of it after the pesky Yankees made the end of September a nailbiter. Toronto and New York finished the regular season tied for first place in the AL East with a 94-68 record.
However, the Blue Jays held the tiebreaker over the Yankees by going 8-5 against them in the regular season, which is why New York had to play the Boston Red Sox in the wild-card series.
The best-of-five bout will start on Saturday at Rogers Centre in Toronto at 4:08 p.m. EST on Fox.
