FORT MYERS, Fla. — Isiah Kiner-Falefa was a part-time SS (shortstop) by the end of his time with the Yankees, but always a full-time SS (straight shooter).
So the more Aaron Boone thought about Kiner-Falefa’s comments earlier this spring — that the Blue Jays preferred to face the Yankees in the ALDS over the Red Sox because they thought it was a better matchup — the more he realized he probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Because IKF is very honest and real,” Boone said Wednesday. “And I don’t think he meant any slap at us. I frankly didn’t take it that way.”
Kiner-Falefa, the Blue Jay-turned-Red Sox player, confirmed that he did not, in fact, mean it as a jab at his former club, even if it may have quickly endeared him to his new fan base. But he was asked a question in his introductory news conference here last month and did what he always does.
“I just gave the honest answer,” Kiner-Falefa said before the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-0 at JetBlue Park. “It is what it is. I love the guys over there. I have nothing bad to say about anybody over there. It was just a matchup thing. [Garrett] Crochet’s an unbelievable pitcher and we did not want to face Crochet after he went eight innings against us [in late September].”
Kiner-Falefa did not join the Blue Jays until September, so he was not around to see them bludgeon the Yankees during a pair of series at Rogers Centre over the summer. But he had heard about their success against them during the season (8-5) and also knew that if the Red Sox had beaten the Yankees in the AL wild-card series, that would have meant having to face Crochet, the AL Cy Young runner-up.
“I was just hearing what everybody else was telling me,” said Kiner-Falefa, who signed a one-year, $6 million deal with the Red Sox to serve as a utility player. “Obviously you know you have all the [Yankees] big bombers and [Aaron] Judge and all those guys. I’ve seen how good these guys are. It’s like, ‘Are you guys sure?’
“I didn’t mean to ruffle the feathers,” he added. “I forgot how it is back in a big market.”
The comment spread like wildfire, even if it had sound reasoning behind it. The Blue Jays had the Yankees’ number for most of the year and that carried over into the postseason, when they scored 34 runs in 34 innings against them, winning the ALDS in four games. Kiner-Falefa called the Blue Jays an “offensive juggernaut,” a lineup that was contact-oriented but had power, too, and was full of players who knew their role.
Aside from losing Bo Bichette, the Blue Jays are essentially returning the same lineup this season, meaning it remains a problem the Yankees will have to figure out — one of many challenges standing in their way in the AL East, which Boone perennially describes as the toughest in baseball.
“It doesn’t feel like everything has to go right for these teams to be good,” Boone said.
That includes the Red Sox, the spring version of which the Yankees got their first look at on Wednesday. Crochet, too, remains a problem, but Boone also said their offense could be better than they are getting credit for.
“I know Alex Bregman leaving them is a big loss or whatever, but it doesn’t feel like people are talking about [Willson] Contreras enough, from a production standpoint and how consistent he’s been throughout his career,” Boone said. “So it’s going to be a team that puts the ball in play, they’ve got athleticism, they’ve got some complementary parts. I think they’re going to be good offensively.”
Alex Cora, not surprisingly, was also complimentary of the Yankees – pointing to their pitching and getting “one of the best, if not the best pitcher in the big leagues” back in Gerrit Cole — even if much of their fan base was not satisfied with their winter.
“I got a lot of friends that are Yankee fans and some of them are happy, some of them are upset,” Cora said. “But at the end of the day, one of the things they always do is they’re in the dance, and that’s what you try to do. Just get in the dance and then see what happens.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
