TORONTO — No place served as the Yankees’ personal house of horrors this season quite like Rogers Centre.
A large part of that is because of their infield defense essentially falling apart once it stepped foot on Canadian soil — er, turf.
But coming off a wild-card series in which Yankees infielders consistently delivered high-level defense, that will only take on more significance, looming large over their hopes of knocking off the Blue Jays in the ALDS beginning on Saturday at Rogers Centre.
The Yankees went 1-6 here during the regular season, making 11 errors in seven games — 11.7 percent of their errors in 4.3 percent of their games.
But they did not have Ryan McMahon, who has provided superb defense since coming over at the trade deadline, in any of those games.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. is also no longer playing out of position at third base, Jasson Domínguez is now relegated to a bench role, and Anthony Volpe has snapped out of his brutal defensive funk from the summer, all of which has made the Yankees a sharper group with the glove.
“Quite a bit [better],” manager Aaron Boone said Friday before the Yankees worked out at Rogers Centre. “I mean, obviously Anthony is playing really well over the last couple months there. Obviously what Mac has brought, Jazz being full-time at second base now. We got a good club. We got a good defense, impactful defenders. Still got to go play well.
“The times when we were here in the summer, [we weren’t] at our best certainly and still working through some things. I feel like the last couple months we’ve really started to play really well. Contrary to some thoughts up here, we’re a really good team.”
Boone was referring to Blue Jays analyst and former longtime catcher Buck Martinez saying last month that the Yankees were “not a good team.”
Martinez cited the Yankees throwing too many wild pitches, making mistakes in the field, not running the bases well and not having a chance to win if they don’t hit home runs.
“He’s wrong,” Boone said with a grin. “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. We have the challenge of a new series against another really good team and a really good opponent that has earned the opportunity to wait out this first series.”
The Yankees are a different team now than they were the last time they were here (for two series in July), but the Blue Jays have the potential to still cause them some issues.
Their 17.8 percent strikeout rate was the lowest of any team in the majors during the regular season, highlighting an ability to put the ball in play and force the issue with their team speed.
That led to some innings here in the summer when the Yankees suffered death by a thousand cuts, which was partly their own doing because they threw the ball around.
But the Yankees had also shot themselves in the foot against the Red Sox during the regular season, but cleaned up their act in the wild-card series, which helped in only allowing six runs across the three games.
“I think it’s been really good,” McMahon said of the infield defense. “Obviously Jazz makes that incredible play up the middle to save a run. [We’re] taking care of the baseball, making sure we’re turning hits into outs.”
