If the Yankees-Blue Jays rivalry needed more drama after the hubbub from last season, Daniel Vogelbach might’ve added some.
The ex-Met homered in his first at-bat against Gerrit Cole in a spring training game Friday, and a bat flip — followed by a slow trot around the bases — frustrated the Yankees ace, who told reporters that he doesn’t “forget a lot of things.”
“Yeah, what’s the day? Are we still in February? March 1? Yeah, he enjoyed that homer,” Cole said.
The two-run blast followed Davis Schneider’s single in the first inning and traveled 370 feet to right field — leaving Vogelbach’s bat with an exit velocity of 102.8 mph.
After Vogelbach made contact with Cole’s fastball, he watched his homer’s trajectory for a second as his bat dropped toward the ground, and he flipped it with his right hand as it neared the dirt.
Manager Aaron Boone said Cole “seemed to not love it.”
Vogelbach signed a minor league contract with the Blue Jays on Feb. 16 that included an invite to spring training, providing a reset for the 2019 All-Star after his disappointing Mets stint ended when they non-tendered him in November.
He appeared in 159 games for the Mets after they acquired him from the Pirates in 2022, but Vogelbach hit just .241 with a .774 OPS while recording 19 homers and 73 RBIs.
Vogelbach’s underwhelming 2023 campaign prompted the Mets to give up-and-coming prospect Mark Vientos more at-bats after their season spiraled away from the playoffs, causing Vogelbach to gather just 25 plate appearances once the calendar flipped to September.
In three spring training games with the Blue Jays entering Saturday, Vogelbach has doubled, homered and scored three runs in seven at-bats.
Cole, in his first start of the spring, allowed three runs on four hits across two innings, and the Yankees defeated the Blue Jays, 8-4, behind a pair of homers — including one grand slam — from Anthony Rizzo and one from Juan Soto.
The controversy that defined the Yankees’ games against the Blue Jays in 2023 started when the Toronto announcers speculated that Aaron Judge’s eyes had been wandering during an at-bat that ended with a homer.
Then, the next night, Blue Jays manager John Schneider shouted, “Shut up, fat boy,” toward the Yankees’ dugout after initially complaining from Toronto that third-base coach Luis Rojas had shifted too far away from the coach’s box.
