The Blue Jays aren’t over it.
Toronto’s players continue to believe there was shadiness afoot earlier this month when Aaron Judge kept appearing to glance at the Yankees dugout during an at-bat before hitting a towering home run, as Blue Jays announcers Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez wondered aloud what the heck was going on in real-time.
Blue Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt joined Chris Rose on Jomboy Media and explained what his team thinks happened.
“We knew what was going on,” Bassitt said.
“They knew we were tipping. It that illegal? No, it’s not illegal.”
Bassitt called it a “gray area” for whether it was OK for first- and third base coaches to relay signs.
“Judge’s response to it? I have no problem with it. Was it a lie? Yeah, it was a lie,” Bassitt said.
“What do you want him to do, come out and say, ‘Hey, all their pitchers were tipping, and I’m gonna tell them how they’re tipping?’ I think he just made up a story to kind of say, like,’I’m not going to tell them they’re tipping. Like, why would I say that?’”
It is not illegal in baseball to steal pitching signs provided there is no use of technology.
Nevertheless, Judge denied that he was stealing signs.
His explanation for why he was looking at the dugout was that he was bothered by his teammates complaining to the home plate umpire after manager Aaron Boone had already been ejected in a game the Yankees were leading 6-0.
Later, Judge was annoyed at the insinuation that he was cheating.
“I got some choice words about that, but better just to keep that off the record,” Judge told reporters when asked about the speculation by Martinez and Schulman.
“Especially with the things that have happened in this game with cheating stuff and to get that thrown out, I’m not happy about it. But people can say what they want. I still got a game to play, I got things I gotta do. I told you guys what happened and everybody else can make their own story about it.”
