With the ALDS at stake, Blue Jays manager John Schneider put trust in his bullpen Wednesday night. That trust was rewarded.
Eight Blue Jays pitchers combined to limit the New York Yankees to two runs as Toronto secured a series-clinching 5-2 win over the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the ALDS.
With the win, the Blue Jays advance to the ALCS, where they’ll face the winner of Friday’s Game 5 between the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners. It’s the Jays’ first trip to the league championship round since 2016.
For the Yankees, a season removed from a trip to the World Series ends in disappointment and short of the ALCS.
The Blue Jays won Games 1 and 2 in Toronto thanks to offensive outbursts of 10 and 13 runs. There was no need for such fireworks Wednesday night. Toronto started the game with reliever Louis Varland on the mound, and its bullpen yielded just a solo home run to nine-hole hitter Ryan McMahon in the third inning and a meaningless run in the ninth.
Aside from that solo shot, the Yankees didn’t put a runner on second until the sixth inning. New York’s vaunted lineup featuring Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. consistently failed to mount a threat.
The Yankees went into the bottom of the eighth facing a 5-1 deficit with the heart of their order due up. Judge struck out, and Bellinger flied out. The Yankees then loaded the bases with two outs on a Stanton single, Chisholm walk and a walk of pinch-hitter Ben Rice. But closer Jeff Hoffman extinguished the fire after walking Rice by inducing an inning-ending fly out from Austin Wells.
And that was New York’s last, best chance. Hoffman closed out the ninth allowing a single run.
The game was close early as rookie Yankees starter Cam Schlittler yielded two earned runs through 6 1/3 innings. But a Chisholm error on a double-play ball that could have ended the inning in the seventh opened the door for Toronto to extend the lead.
Two batters later, Nathan Lukes did just that with a two-run single into left-center field to extend Toronto’s lead to 4-1.
From there, the Yankees were under the gun and never recovered.
The win continues a Blue Jays campaign in which they battled with the Yankees to win the AL East via a head-to-head tiebreaker when both finished 94-68. But in the ALDS, there was little doubt about which team was better.
Toronto outscored New York 34-19 in four games and was in full control of each of its three wins. New York needed to rally from a 6-1 deficit to secure its 9-6 Game 3 win.
The dominant series victory will send the Blue Jays into the ALCS with considerable momentum as they seek their first World Series appearance since winning it in 1993.
The loss for the Yankees will send New York into another season filled with questions as it remains in search of the first World Series championship of the Judge era.