The Toronto Blue Jays are wondering why Aaron Judge appeared to be shifting his eyes to look at his team's dugout between pitches at times during their game on Monday, but the New York Yankees slugger is denying he was doing anything questionable.
After he shifted his eyes a few times, Judge belted his second homer of the game off Blue Jays reliever Jay Jackson in the eighth inning.
"I saw it. Kind of odd that a hitter would be looking in that direction," said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. "He's obviously looking in that direction for a reason. We'll dive into it a little bit more tonight."
"I haven't seen hitters do that before (in my experience), so I can't say what he was doing... we'll see what plays out from this," added Jackson.
"I'm not going to say anything about another organization. For him to be peeking that amount of time — it seemed like it wasn't just a glance, then kinda readjusting your eyes to get back on the pitcher."
After the game, Judge told Sportsnet's Ben Nicholson-Smith he was doing it to encourage his teammates to be quiet as they were chirping following the ejection of Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who was unhappy with the umpires. The Yankees led 6-0 before Judge's solo shot.
The eye shift was noticed by Sportsnet's Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez on the television broadcast of New York's 7-4 win.
"It was really, really unusual. But you and I both looked at each other when we saw that," Martinez said.
The concern would be that Judge could have been looking at his dugout for signs if the Blue Jays happened to be tipping off pitches.
