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Speaking to the Star from the visitors’ TV booth at the Rogers Centre before Tuesday’s game, the veteran play-by-play caller insisted his words had been misinterpreted.

“Maybe I articulated it poorly,” Kay said, “but I was talking about run differential, where they have exceeded their run differential. And in the same sentence, I said the Yankees’ run differential is much better and they have underperformed.”

He was right on both counts. When the comments were made after the Jays’ 12-5 Canada Day win over the Yankees drew them to within a game of first place, the Jays had scored just four more runs than they had allowed. The Yanks were 105 runs to the good.

Kay insists it wasn’t a dig at the Jays.

“I was complimenting them, that they’re exceeding what the numbers say,” said Kay, who has called Yankees’ games on the YES Network since 2002 and was the team’s radio broadcaster, along with John Sterling, for a decade before that.

“I mean, they’re an extraordinarily well-put-together team. Great bench, a lot of moves for (John Schneider) to make. They play hard, they don’t strike out and they’re proving a lot of people wrong.”

While Kay believes that what he said was right, just taken the wrong way, he still wanted to clear the air with Jays manager John Schneider, so he got bench coach Don Mattingly, a Yankee legend, to broker a meeting.

“I just reached out to Donnie, I said, ‘Can you tell Schneider what I meant?’ and then Donnie actually told Schneider and Schneider contacted me,” Kay said. “We had a text exchange and he said, ‘I totally understand, you don’t have to clarify anything, I know exactly what you mean.’

“People don’t want to believe it, they think I’m backtracking when I’m not.”

Kay is right when he said he didn’t articulate his point well. When he said “the Blue Jays are not a first-place team, I’m sorry,” he paused before moving on to “if you look at run differential …”

It was easy to interpret that as two separate thoughts, though he insists making the point about run differential was the only thing he was trying to do. And when he said it, the Jays were a game behind the Yankees.

But he went on to say “they’re not playing great baseball — I’m sorry, they’re not,” about a team that, at the time, had won 21 of its last 31 games, the second-best record in the major leagues over that span. They have won 12 of 16 since then.

“I think I might have said they’re not playing that great because I was looking at the numbers and I probably didn’t articulate it the way I should have,” Kay said. “They were playing better than you would think they were playing when you looked at their numbers.”

The Jays have won Kay over.

“It’s not mirrors, they’re really good,” the 64-year-old said. ”They play really well and they play smart, they play hard and there’s something to be said for that. And I think that’s something that numbers don’t capture.”

Kay believes there’s a reason the Jays have dominated the Yankees lately.

“The Blue Jays don’t strike out, so they put the ball in play,” he said. “And you’re making the Yankees make plays and, in these five games so far, they have not made plays.”

That continued Tuesday, as New York shortstop Anthony Volpe’s throwing error opened the door to a game-tying, two-run rally in the sixth inning.

The Jays could not score again and wound up falling 5-4, so they remain half a game behind the Detroit Tigers for the best record in the American League — despite the league’s seventh-best run differential.