TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays’ post-season aspirations are now partly dependent on the help of others after a series-opening loss to the New York Yankees, although a Baltimore Orioles victory over the Boston Red Sox helped mitigate the damage.
Still, control over their fate was lost in a 7-2 setback to the wild-card leaders Tuesday night, when they couldn’t contain the Herculean duo of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. The former homered in the third and brought home the go-ahead sacrifice fly in the fifth, while the latter delivered a back-breaking three-run homer in the seventh on a down and in changeup that only he and few others are capable of launching 421 feet.
In combination with 6.2 innings of capable relief work after Jameson Taillon was forced from the game after re-aggravating the right ankle tendon injury he’d just returned from, the buzz around the first game of playoff consequence at Rogers Centre since 2016, before a crowd of 28,769, quickly fizzled.
The mettle and perseverance GM Ross Atkins rightly touted beforehand will now face its toughest test, with the Blue Jays (87-70) now three games back of the Yankees (90-67) for the first wild card and still one game behind the Red Sox (88-69) for the second.
Pathways to the post-season remain, but to catch the Yankees, the Blue Jays must win the remaining two games of this series, win out against the Orioles to close their regular season and then count on the Tampa Bay Rays to win at least one game in New York this weekend.
To overtake the Red Sox, who have two more dates with the Orioles before visiting the Washington Nationals, they’ll need to finish with two more wins than Boston in the five remaining games both teams have.
Neither scenario is impossible — and there’s the potential for intriguing tiebreakers — but the Blue Jays can’t put themselves in a position to require an unreasonable amount of help from others.
The Blue Jays seemed poised to get off on the right foot as Hyun Jin Ryu returned from the injured list with an uptick in his velocity, and escaped a bad-BABP-luck jam in the first by striking out Stanton and popping up Joey Gallo.
George Springer then played catalyst in the bottom half, walking off Taillon, stealing second on a full-count strikeout by Marcus Semien and scoring on Bo Bichette’s single.
Judge knotted things up in the third with a 106.4-m.p.h. laser axed over the right-field wall on a middle-middle cookie that deserved its fate, but the Blue Jays reclaimed the lead in the fourth when Corey Dickerson golfed a double to right on a Michael King curveball to plate Bichette.
Ryu couldn’t hold that edge in the fifth, when Anthony Rizzo dunked a cutter well off the plate into left field with two on and Dickerson’s throw home hit Gio Urshela, allowing the tying run to score.
Adam Cimber took over and induced a sac fly from Judge and the score remained 3-2 until the seventh, when Stanton got to a Trevor Richards changeup headed for his ankle.
Ryu topped out at 93.1 m.p.h. — the sixth-hardest pitch he’s thrown this season — and averaged 91.4, a notable 1.4 m.p.h. above his season average.
