TORONTO -- On the dry erase board in the visitors clubhouse Sunday afternoon at the Rogers Centre, someone scrawled the following message: "Cheer up errebody (sic). Won the series. Still in first place."

The author of the quote was not identified, but the meaning was clear: Taking two of three from the Toronto Blue Jays and heading home back atop the AL East was a pretty good weekend's work.

Even if, of course, it could have been even better.

Yes, the New York Yankees' offense wasted another fine outing by Luis Severino, and yes, the rookie needed to get four outs in the third inning. Yes, the Blue Jays outfielders were able to make catches similar to the one Carlos Beltran botched in the blazing midday Toronto sun, and yes, the game might have been different had Beltran caught Troy Tulowitzki's routine fly to send Toronto back to the dugout without Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista coming to bat.

But hell, other, less talented pitchers than Severino have been forced to get an extra out before, and even in 18 big league seasons, Beltran probably hasn't played many games in the outfield here when the roof has been open. And who's to say Severino would not have hung the same sliders to Donaldson and Bautista, the ones that became an RBI single and a two-run homer, in the fourth inning anyway? In that case, the Yankees might have lost 2-1 instead of 3-1, right?

And if all that doesn't do it for you, refer back to that message on the dry erase board and start over.

All things considered, the Yankees had a pretty good weekend in Toronto. Having lost two of three to the weak-hitting, last-place Cleveland Indians, you know the possibility of losing two of three here, or even being swept, was a lot better than the possibility of it going the other way around.

So there's that.

And if you want to blame Beltran, you're not going to find much support in the Yankees clubhouse. Manager Joe Girardi called playing a sun field "the toughest element a player has to face," and agreed with the final scoring decision, which changed what was originally ruled an error into a two-base hit for Tulowitzki.

"Balls lost in the sun are almost always base hits," Girardi said.

Luis Severino's two mistakes Sunday against the Blue Jays weren't enough to spoil the Yankees' weekend in Toronto. Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

The net effect of the ruling was on Severino's ERA, which may be of concern to fantasy baseball geeks and DraftKings junkies, but not on the final score.

The Yankees lost this game not because of a ball they didn't catch, but because of the balls they didn't hit.

After beating up on David Price on Friday and Marco Estrada on Saturday, the Yankees' offense, which seemed to be coming out of its August funk, could manage only three hits in 6 2/3 innings off Drew Hutchison, who lugged a 5.26 ERA into the game with him. And two of those hits were by Jacoby Ellsbury, one of which, a solo home run in the sixth inning, accounted for their only run of the day. The Yankees also got a single out of Brett Gardner and a bloop double out of Brian McCann.

The rest of the lineup went 0-for-19 with a walk. Alex Rodriguez was particularly bad, 0-for-3 with three strikeouts and a walk. The Yankees' numbers with runners in scoring position -- 0-for-1 -- are deceivingly good, because they virtually never had any runners in scoring position.

And by the way, without Beltran, the Yankees probably would not have won Friday, when his pinch-hit home run was the difference in a 4-3 victory, and might have faced a different game Saturday, when his first-inning home run set the tone for what became a 4-1 win.

As Girardi said, "Any time you can win two of three, that's good series."

So instead of finding places to point fingers, why not take a look at the positives that happened in Toronto over the weekend?

Once again, Severino showed he belongs among the big boys, even if he still doesn't have a win to show for it. Once again, he was poised -- "old beyond his years," as McCann put it -- talented (flashed a 98 mph fastball) and still somewhat inexperienced, as shown by the hanging sliders he served to Donaldson and Bautista.

But as Severino himself said Saturday, the difference between pitching here and pitching in Scranton is, "When you make a mistake, you pay for it."

Severino made two mistakes and he and the Yankees paid for them. That's baseball.

Which is exactly what Severino said when asked about the difficulty of having to get four outs against the Jays when it's hard enough to get three. That's maturity.

And it's another reason to be glad Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner chose not to include Severino in any trade-deadline deals. It's been only three starts, but the kid looks like the goods.

Now, the Yankees head home -- where they play 28 of their remaining 46 games, and where they have played .604 baseball this season -- for 10 games, the first seven against the Minnesota Twins and the Indians, who by rights should be easy pickings. In fact, the rest of the schedule looks like a fairly easy ride -- no more road trips out of the Eastern time zone, no flights longer than 2 1/2 hours, no three-city trips unless you count the "road trip" to Flushing for three games with the Mets in late September.

"The travel is favorable to us," Girardi said. "We're at home, which is good for us. We need to take advantage of it."

Indeed they do. The seven-game lead may be gone, but the edge is still there, the team is still in first place, and the starting rotation seems to have added a pretty good arm at the trade deadline without having made a trade.

That message on the board was meant for the players to read, but it might just as well have been posted on the various social media outlets where Yankees fans had been venting, hand-wringing and yes, whining, all Sunday afternoon.

Cheer up. The Yankees went into the Rogers Centre, met the big bad Blue Jays, and came out alive.

Not only alive, but on top. What's so bad about that?