Hated Blue Jays manager sadly has a good point about Yankees relaying signs

With the AL East race closing in on the finish line, the New York Yankees came up big, taking two out of three from the division-leading Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend. Part of the way they got there, though, ruffled the feathers of Blue Jays manager John Schneider, who doled out a few choice comments after falling to the Bombers by a score of 4-3 on Sunday.

Schneider noted how good the Yankees are offensively when they can pick up on the opposing team's signs, saying that they are "good when they have something."

The implication being that the Yankees aren't nearly as good if they don't already know what's coming. A back-handed compliment at its finest, there's a little bit more than just a no-duh moment at play here.

The Yankees have been one of the better clubs at picking up and relaying signs (the legal way) this season. A perfect example was the moment Schneider was referring to. With Aaron Judge on second and Cody Bellinger on first, Ben Rice was the beneficiary of the two sluggers waving their arms to alert him to Max Scherzer's offering, which he promptly deposited into the right-center stands for a three-run dinger.

The Yankees have to prove they can consistently hit good pitching, especially when they can't decipher the opposition's signs

Schneider's comments rang the alarm bell for the rest of the league. The Yankees want to crack the code and relay signs to their hitters, and other teams will now be very wary of that fact, no doubt changing up their sequences and making the series of signs more complex.

More importantly, the Yankees are going to have to prove that, sign-stealing or not, they can consistently hit good pitching. The 41-year-old Scherzer isn't the dominant ace he once was, but after presumably changing up the signs following Rice's homer, the Yankees were able to scratch just one more run across against the grizzled vet, who recorded eight strikeouts.

The Yankees still haven't proven they can beat the Red Sox, for example, and until the offense looks similarly potent against good teams as it does against bad ones, there will be concerns.

This isn't a new issue. For years, the Yankees have shown that their powerful bats can disappear regardless of the opponent. Garrett Crochet or a faceless 5.00 ERA pitcher, the Yankees' offensive malfeasance knows no bounds. While the struggles that plagued the club in July and August seem to be behind them, they're not out of the woods yet. They just dropped their first two games against the Tigers and couldn't hit two scuffling starters and a struggling bullpen.

The Yankees have to prove they can consistently hit in big games against top opponents without that advantage. And they absolutely have to in order to catch the Blue Jays and make some noise during the October festivities to come.