AL DIVISION SERIES: YANKEES VS BLUE JAYS

October 6, 2025

John Schneider

Yankee Stadium

Toronto Blue Jays

Workout Day Press Conference

Q. Vlady was saying for an optional day everyone's in. What does this look like for guys? Is it different for certain groups what they're working on today?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, some guys need some treatment, some guys need some work. Optional for guys that needed work, and pretty much everyone is here, which is pretty cool. They want to kind of keep the feeling going and keep a rhythm about it. Everyone will do a little bit different, but pretty nice that everyone's here.

Q. Going into Game 3 off of two very successful days from your lineup, are there any changes you're considering? Anything you're looking at going forward for the matchup based on Rodón?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: A couple maybe. It's enticing to just say run it back, but I think every starting pitcher is a little bit different. I think we have guys that fit different molds a little bit, based on stuff. Maybe a couple tweaks. We roll it out pretty similar, righty, lefty, but there could be a couple tweaks based on recent performance, based on kind of what we're expecting to see too.

Q. Varland, when he first came over, a couple ups and downs early on. Lately he's been great. Was there a point in there when anything shifted behind the scenes or mentality-wise or anything that led to these results in your mind?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: I think mentality a little bit. You can see a little edge to him each time he comes in. I think just the pitch deployment, to be honest with you. Leaning into his fastball a little bit more. Looking back at some of his rough outings, I feel like the curveball was getting hit. He's also throwing his change-up, which it's 93 miles an hour. But I think it gets a little bit less predictable adding a change-up and a little slider too.

I think he's evolved, and I think that his demeanor has definitely evolved too.

Q. Just following up, looking at some of the footage from last night, it looked like Seranthony might have been tipping maybe the Yankees had something. Is that something you're concerned with, looking at at all?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, looking at it. You've got to do a good job of being clean, being tight, you know what I mean? It's part of the game, part of the game everywhere. Yeah, we'll look at it and make any adjustments we need to make and just try to keep them off second.

Q. You had to take Daulton out of the lineup when he was coming back, an issue from the injury after some pretty big days. Would it be pretty difficult to take him out tomorrow?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yes, I won't.

Q. Just on Bo, I don't know if he traveled here with the team. Is there any kind of update on where he's at?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, he's still progressing. He's back in Toronto and still progressing, trying to ramp up, doing everything he can do to kind of get himself ready. There's no glaring update with him, just moving on to the next step in his process.

Q. Staying on the injury theme, with Jose Barrios, is there any update there? Does he have a timeline to throw? Any updates on him?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Nothing new, no. He's still not throwing, still kind of in a shutdown period. As hopefully we continue to go, we'll kind of update his plan accordingly.

Q. A bit of a different note, there was a clear inflection point Game 1 in that sixth inning with the bases loaded, a couple of inflection points yesterday. I was wondering, do you sense inflection points over the course of a game? Or how do you feel your team handles those moments when you're seeing them develop?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, you can always kind of feel it. You can never predict it, but you can feel it. Sometimes it happens in the first or second. I think they're handling it well. Whether it's Gausy or Louie in the sixth inning of Game 1, Ernie's at-bat, Vlad's at-bat, you can kind of feel it coming. Again, you just want to do what you normally do in more pressure-filled spots.

I think that they've done well. Going to have to continue to do well and not try to do too much. This series is far from over. We're coming into a tough place to play against a really good pitcher and a really good team.

I think you try to stay ahead of those situations, and you want to try to just be yourself.

Q. Zooming out big picture, what Trey has done over the four outings thus far, how is it altering how you're maybe thinking about him potentially into next year at this point? I know that's a long ways down the road, but has he changed something about how you were envisioning him going into next season?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: No, I haven't thought about next season until you just mentioned it. No thoughts on that yet.

Q. You guys are a team that does a lot of little things right, especially on the defensive end. How important can that be, especially in the postseason when the margin for error can be so thin?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, it's huge. I think that's why we're able to have so many come-from-behind wins. Just for example, Myles making that catch down the line yesterday. That inning gets going, gets going. If that doesn't get caught, it kind of keeps going.

We've taken a lot of pride in that aspect of our game the last couple years especially. To keep innings where they should be is huge. Every single extra at-bat, especially against a team like this, is huge.

I think it's really key. It could be as easy as just like cutting a ball off in the outfield and keeping a guy to a single, just like little things that we talk about. It's a big part of our game, and I think it's really helped us get to where we are.

Q. Just one more on Trey. What makes his splitter so effective?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: A lot of it, I think, is the release point. I remember talking about him and Kev kind of having similar arsenals back to back, but it's really different, just from where it's coming from. The thing is coming from the sky basically, and the action of it is a little bit different, where Kev may be straight down, and his is kind of falling off almost on a diagonal.

When he's throwing his fastball where he wants to as well, it makes it really hard to adjust in a short amount of time.

Q. I see you're sporting the white panel ball cap today. Safe to say you'll be wearing that again tomorrow?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I didn't pack another hat.

Q. George Springer is having his best season since 2019. What was the turnaround? Also, how is he as a teammate? I've heard so many good things about him as a teammate.

JOHN SCHNEIDER: As a teammate, he is infectious, he's a leader. Just his track record, I think, guys gravitate towards him because of what he's accomplished in this game. And when he's going good, he can really be the straw that stirs it, you know.

What he's accomplished this year has been -- I don't want to say unbelievable. We thought he was going to have a bounce-back year. All the physical things are still there for a guy that's getting older, but he made some drastic changes, which is hard for a guy at this stage of his career to do. Him and Pop and Lou and Hunter just stayed really convicted to a plan.

You look at his Spring Training, I think he had one hit. Everyone thought he was going to get booed off the field and maybe retire in April, but he was working on something.

He's been right in the middle of everything we've done this year offensively, and it's really, really impressive that he's just had the same exact mindset every single day.

Q. What was that drastic change?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: It's just positioning his body really. Still has the bat speed, still physically strong to do certain things that he could do back 2019, 2018. And I think just realizing that and unlocking that and having people say, hey, you need to do this and make sure your body is in this position more times than not.

Q. In addition to being the face of your franchise, Vlad has also become the face of baseball for an entire country. Maybe outside of Shohei Ohtani, no one else in the sport has that responsibility. I'm wondering how you think he handles sort of that burden and pressure that comes with that, and how meaningful was it for him to have the weekend he just had up in your place?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: That's a good question. I think Vlad has been dealing with some level of awe or super stardom from when he was a teenager. I remember fans chasing our bus down the road in Double-A wanting his autograph or Bo's autograph. He's been dealing with this for a long time, and he's gotten really, really good at handling it.

When he signed his extension, I think he kind of understood that with that comes a little bit of extra responsibility to the organization, to the city, to the country, and he's really kind of tackled that head on.

This weekend it was nice for him and for other guys that have been here in the postseason -- postseason hasn't gone great for the time they've been here -- to kind of have a few moments to where it kind of says, okay, hopefully this year is a little bit different.

Yeah, there's a little bit of extra emotion, little bit of extra meaning, if you will, that Vlad who is here for a long period of time, was right in the middle of it.

Q. The last two nights, if you watched the other AL series, or do you want to totally disconnect?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: I've watched a few. I'm not catching every pitch every single time, but definitely watching how teams playing, who's being used where, kind of what some strategy may be, what lineups look like and things like that, but way more focused on the team over there.

Q. Is there any time during the year where you just tune out and need a few hours away from baseball?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Man, I wish my wife were here.

No. I guess that's the easiest answer, no. Maybe if I'm on vacation somewhere, but my phone still rings. It's hard to turn it off, man. It's kind of what gets me going.

Q. On pitch tipping, like very broadly, when you say a guy cleaning it up, does clean always need to be like the same look, neutral, or can clean mean weird, unpredictable, different things all the time?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: It could be either. I could sit up here and talk about pitch tipping for a couple of days. I think if you're just doing the same thing, you're probably in a good spot. I think if your hand is in the same spot in your glove on all your pitches, you're in a good spot. If it's not, it's fair game, you know what I mean?

I know I made the comment last time we were here that the Yankees are good when they have something. I meant that in a way that that's not the only time they're good. They're really good. But if you have a tell, they're really good at exposing it is what I meant to say. As are a lot of teams. So I think that you have to be aware of it. You have to be able to make some adjustments along the way.

I think just being consistent is probably your best bet.

Q. Quickly in your offense, the home runs and lack of strikeouts, like you've had the best of both worlds the last couple games, is there something that's connecting that through all these at-bats that you see is really working across the lineup right now?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I think that's kind of us as a whole. We're going to put the ball in play. We've done that over the course of the year. I think the home runs are a by-product of a really good approach against specific pitchers that you're really focused on at this time of year.

Looking at all the home runs, with the exception of Ernie's, he was just trying to hit a sac fly, and like he said, he just kind of blacked out. I think it's just a consistent, a really, really delivered approach against guys that we're going to be facing.

Q. I know during the season you guys did the twice monthly kind of self-assessments. How does that change in the playoffs? Is an off day a good time for that, or is that now happening every single night?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: It's kind of happening every night, I think. We did a little bit of self-evaluating playoffs past and playoffs going into this year during the bye week and how things can be run a little bit differently and how there's a higher likelihood of X, Y, and Z in the postseason. We'll continue to do it, but you have to kind of react in real time.

Again, it's funny, you can have all the plans in the world, and then Trey Yesavage can go do that, right? You just never know. So you kind of just assess every day kind of after the game and then the next day.

Q. This being New York and Yankee Stadium, is there any different feel here being October playoff baseball for you and the guys?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: I don't think so, no. We've played here quite a bit over the years and this year. I think it will be a loud crowd. It will be an energized crowd. It's obviously a very passionate fan base. I think you have to worry about what you're trying to do against Carlos Rodón tomorrow.

That's one of the things, one of the many things I love about this team, kind of focusing on what's important now. It will be a fun atmosphere, I know that, but I don't think it makes it different than anywhere else we've been playing in the postseason.