Michael Kay does not believe he was insulting the Blue Jays when he said they were “not a first-place team.”

But because of the controversy his comments sparked, which included a back-and-forth with Sportsnet broadcaster Jamie Campbell, Kay, the voice of the Yankees on YES Network, reached out to Yankee great and current Blue Jays bench coach Don Mattingly to relay a message to Toronto manager John Schneider.

Kay insists he was complimenting the Jays for outplaying their run differential and credited Schneider for that.

“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 told the Toronto Star before Tuesday’s Yankees-Blue Jays game. “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.”

The Blue Jays swept a four-game series against the Yankees in Toronto from June 30-July 3 and just took the rubber game of a three-game series Wednesday night.

Toronto, whose run differential is +32, leads the Yankees, whose run differential is +106, by four games in the AL East.

“Maybe I articulated it poorly,” Kay told the Star, “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.”

After the four-game sweep, Campbell took a playful jab at Kay on the Sportsnet postgame show while holding and tossing a broom.

“I can think of a certain Yankee broadcaster, in fact, who is gonna have to go on his show [Friday] and admit that the Blue Jays are a first-place team,” Campbell said.

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Kay fired back at Campbell days later on the YES Network pregame show before the Subway Series finale.

“What I would say to Jamie is I can easily say the Blue Jays are a first-place team because I’m not a fawning fanboy. I’m a broadcaster,” Kay said. “And the bottom line is they are, in fact, a first-place team.

“Imagine if (YES Network studio analyst) Jack Curry was waving a broom on the Yankees postgame show,” Kay said. “He would probably be called into the office and shortly fired after that.

“Now, I love Toronto. It is a cosmopolitan city. It is one of the greatest cities in the world, for me. You’re waving a broom on a postgame show, you are turning it into Mayberry RFD. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand it. You should be proud of the fact you are in first place.

“And one final thing: You shouldn’t hang on the rim three minutes into the third quarter of a basketball game. Feel good about sweeping the Yankees. Feel good about winning all these games in a row. Feel good about being in first place. But to hang on the rim this early? Let’s hang on the rim in October. That’s when you hang on the rim.”

Kay then delved into why he couldn’t help but return fire at Campbell during an appearance on The Post’s “The Show with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman” podcast.

“I always find myself in these situations and I’m damaged,” Kay said. “I wish I didn’t act like this. I wish I didn’t have to react, but you know, I know you (Sherman) come from the same sort of humble beginnings as I do and there’s a lot of street in us and we want to fight back, especially when we feel that we were wronged.

“I am a damaged freak. I wish that I could simply be a guy who does the game and just [doesn’t] have Met fans coming at me and Blue Jay fans now … It wears on you, it really does.”