Questions and rumors have been swirling since Monday’s game between the Yankees and the Blue Jays after Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge was seen at bat shifting his eyes toward his team’s dugout ahead of a massive center field homer.
Video of the at-bat shows Judge facing the pitcher, bust rolling his eyes to his right to catch a glimpse of the dugout, just before the pitch that gave him a 462-foot homer against Toronto reliever Jay Jackson.
But Blue Jays broadcasters Buck Martinez and Dan Shulman seemed to immediately cast suspicion over the player’s furtive glances, and hinted at dark motives over it all, the New York Post reported.
“All right Buck (Martinez), so you and I looked at each other at the same moment right when we saw this, three pitches ago,” play-by-player Dan Shulman said over a video of one of Judge’s glancing looks
“What is that? Where is he looking?” Shulman wondered aloud.
“Really, really unusual,” Martinez, a former MLB catcher, agreed. “You and I both looked at each other when we saw that.”
“You don’t want to go throwing allegations around without knowing, but…” Shulman added.
Aaron Judge hits a home run as the Blue Jays broadcasters wonder why he keeps glancing toward the dugout pic.twitter.com/ZrOY7grbYV
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) May 16, 2023
Shulman then speculated about what Judge may have been doing.
“Do you think he’s trying to see if he can see [Blue Jays catcher Alejandro] Kirk, if Kirk’s away?” Shulman asked Martinez. “It’s more likely to be a slider if Kirk’s in, and he can’t see him, it’s more likely to be a fastball?”
But Martinez thought that Judge was not looking at the catcher by the direction of his glance.
After the game, Blue Jays pitcher Jackson actually went there with the thought that the Yankees were stealing signs.
“When I came back to the dugout (one of the coaches) told me you’re going to be pissed when you see the video,” Jackson said, according to the Post. “He said they are tipping pitches.”
“I’m not going to say anything against any organization … but for him to be peeking over for that amount of time, it seemed like it wasn’t just a glance and re-adjusting to get back on the pitcher,” Johnson added.
“Kind of odd that a hitter would be looking in that direction,” Toronto manager John Schneider also said. “He’s obviously looking in that direction for a reason and dive into it a little more tonight and tomorrow and make sure we’re doing everything we can to make ourselves susceptible to tendencies.”
For his part, Judge said that there was a lot of chatter going on in his dugout and he was just looking over there to see if everyone was still talking.
“There was kind of a lot of chirping from our dugout, which I really didn’t like in the situation where it’s a 6-0 game, and I know Boonie got tossed,” Judge explained after the game. “I was trying to save Boonie by calling timeout like, ‘Hey, lemme work here.’ I was kinda trying to see who was chirping in the dugout. It’s 6-0, like, ‘Boonie got tossed; let’s just go to work now.’”
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