NEW YORK — Essentially, a bullpen day is utilizing relievers in a game of counting outs during which, in the words of John Schneider, “you try to thread the needle a little bit.” Apt analogy for trying to steal three outs with one arm, five or six with another, eventually getting to 27 in a positive way. Executed well, they’re a useful tool, as the Los Angeles Dodgers executed four of them during their run to the World Series a year ago. Still, for the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night, running one while trying to close out the New York Yankees without a decisive fifth game, advancing to the American League Championship Series in the process, felt like trying to stuff a climbing rope through a needle’s eye.
Yet, once again, the Blue Jays used collective contributions from across their roster, as they so often have in this convention-defying season, to do precisely that, stitching their way into baseball’s final four like the deftest of tailors with a 5-2 win.
They’ll host the winner of Friday’s Game 5 between the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers in the ALCS opener Sunday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.
The day after surrendering a 6-1 lead in a 9-6 loss that extended the best-of-five series, they started with four outs from opener Louis Varland, who pitched in each of the four games. Mason Fluharty followed with three outs. Then came five from Seranthony Domiguez, unusually entering during the third inning for a pocket featuring Aaron Judge. Eric Lauer, taking over after George Springer’s go-ahead sacrifice fly in the top of the fifth, followed with another five. Yariel Rodriguez got Jazz Chisholm Jr. with two on and two out to end the sixth, and after Nathan Lukes’ two-run single opened some more breathing room, Brendon Little threw a clean seventh. After Myles Straw added an RBI single in the top half of the eighth, Braydon Fisher got two outs but left two on for Jeff Hoffman, who escaped the eighth and then struck out Cody Bellinger to end the ninth in front of a crowd of 47,823.
The tapestry finale capped a series featuring monster performances from both Vladimir Guerrero Jr., whose RBI single in the first opened the scoring, and Judge, duelling in what Giancarlo Stanton described as watching “juggernauts go back and forth.”
Guerrero reached base 11 times and drove in nine runs during the series, while Judge reached 13 times while driving in six, both a strategic threat each time their turn came up.
“You’re going to come across great players in the post-season, that’s the reality of it,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “(Guerrero) is one of the great hitters in the game and someone that we’ve got to make sure we execute at the highest level if we’re going to have success against him. … You’ve got to be able to navigate it to keep moving.”
Blue Jays manager John Schneider said the impact both made “has been as advertised,” calling it “good for baseball.”
But “more importantly, you can’t get caught up in that too much,” he added. “We’ve talked about nine-on-one. We’ve talked about 13 guys contributing every single day. The minute that you feel like you have to do it all yourself is when things start to go the wrong way.”
The Blue Jays did that far better than the Yankees in the series clincher.
Springer led off the game with a double and scored on Guerrero’s RBI single off Cam Schlittler for a 1-0 lead in the first, and that stood until McMahon’s solo shot in the third tied it up. Ernie Clement opened the fifth with a single and Andres Gimenez followed with a chopper up the middle that Schlittler pulled his glove back from, with the ball just sneaking past Chisholm to put men on the corners, with Springer’s fly ball to centre making it a 2-1 game.
Clement started another rally in the seventh with a base hit and again took third when another Gimenez chopper up the middle glanced off Chisholm’s glove for an error. Gimenez stole second on a Springer strikeout to put men on second and third and both scored on Lukes’ single.
The Blue Jays tacked on another in the eighth when Alejandro Kirk doubled off Camilo Doval, advanced to third on a Daulton Varsho flyout and scored when Straw dunked an 0-2 single to right.
Asked before the game how his team was handling Tuesday’s disappointment, Lukes said, “it’s over with – we’re good at turning the page.”
The Blue Jays went out and showed just that, and now it’s on to the next.
