The most satisfying postseason runs come when you exorcise demons. The Yankees did that, redeeming 2004, 2018, and 2021 by rallying back from a 1-0 deficit to take down the Boston Red Sox in three games
to win the Wild Card Series. What added to the significance? The Yankees went a dreadful 4-9 against the Red Sox in the regular season. After Garrett Crochet dominated in Game 1, the amount of doubt that seeped in was palpable.
One AL East rival down, one to go. For the first time ever, the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays will go to war in October, starting on Saturday at Rogers Centre in a best-of-five ALDS. There are a ton of narratives for this series, but there’s also the same level of having a chip on your shoulder if you’re the Yanks. They went just 5-8 against the Jays and a putrid 1-6 north of the border. Those six losses in Toronto during July led to the Blue Jays taking a stranglehold of the division, one that they won by the skin of their teeth… via tiebreaker. The whole reason the Yanks had to survive a dogfight with Boston to even get here was that they couldn’t win one more game against the Blue Jays.
There are a bunch of reasons the Blue Jays won the season series and dominated at home, but there’s one reason that matters for October. It’s been the boogeyman for the Yankees in big games since last year’s World Series: the defense.
In seven games at Rogers Centre this year, the Yankees made eleven errors. That’s a mind-boggling amount. Seven games is 4.3 percent of a season. The Yankees made 11 of their 94 errors in those seven games. That’s 11.7 percent of the team’s errors in just 4.3 percent of the games. That’s really bad. Not to make excuses, but it might be the turf, as the Yanks are a startlingly bad 2-11 on turf (Toronto, Miami, Texas) this season.
It’s also not just the plays that counted as errors that lost them these games, though. So, let’s go through these games in Toronto and see what’s going on with the defense and if the sharper play from the team as a whole lately can make it redundant.
June 30th
The fifth inning is where the Jays got on the board, doing it with small ball. With a 2-0 deficit and Carlos Rodón on the bump, Ernie Clement hit a line drive that bounced off the glove of Jazz Chisholm Jr. at third base, reaching on an infield single. A soft groundout moved him to second, a wild pitch with J.C. Escarra behind the plate moved him to third, and he scored on a Vladdy groundout. The times of catering to DJ LeMahieu are over, and Austin Wells is a superior blocker, so these mistakes can be cleaned up just with Wells and Ryan McMahon being around.
The sixth is the one to avert your eyes from. Davis Schneider doubled to start, and Myles Straw hit a ball deep in the 5.5 ball that Anthony Volpe snared. With Straw’s speed, he has no chance to get an out anywhere, but he decided to try and make a desperation play at third base, which he threw away. The tying run advanced to scoring position. After a grounder by Nathan Lukes got through for an RBI single, Ernie Clement ran the exact same play as Straw. Volpe once again decided to throw the ball instead of eating it, getting no outs and allowing the go-ahead run to get to third.
But wait, there’s more! Escarra, who struggled with catcher’s interference this year, got called for it to load the bags for Vladdy, who smoked a two-run single under the glove of Chisholm at third base. Does McMahon field that ball? Not sure, but he’s more natural dealing with scorchers at the hot corner. As for Volpe’s throws, let’s hope he got it out of his system and plays like he did against the Sox.
July 1st & 2nd
Not as many mistakes here, so we’ll group it together.
On Canada Day, the Yankees had a 2-0 lead with Max Fried on the mound! He did allow a home run to George Springer in the fourth, but got two quick outs and looked to keep rolling. Unfortunately, the 3B Jazz experiment continued to sour, as he pulled Goldschmidt off the bag on an infield single(?) by Schneider, which snowballed into a Myles Straw walk and Andrés Gimenez dead-center bomb. Oh yeah, Escarra also committed another catcher’s interference late in the game that partially led to a five-run seventh.
The next day, the Yankees got flattened early, came all the way back, and experienced the bad Devin Williams in the eighth, eventually losing 11-9. Before that, a ball off the glove of Will Warren allowed a run to score from second, making it 8-0 in the third and an error by Jazz (again) before the comeback set the tone for the ultimate game-losing move, a wild pitch by Williams on a spiked changeup in front of Ben Rice, who was making just his fourth career start behind the plate in the majors.
July 21st
The fifth inning with Rodón on the mound, with the left side of the infield messing up. It happened again.
Two runs were already in on a regular Jays rally, but Rodón settled in to try and get through the fifth for his team. With two out, he got a pair of ground balls out of Straw and Leo Jimenez. Unfortunately for him, Volpe and Oswald Peraza both butchered their throws, and Toronto stretched the lead to 4-1, where the game would end scorewise.
July 22nd
The Yankees won this game. That’s what’s important. That said, this was right in the middle of the worst defensive stretch of Volpe’s life, and with Tim Hill on the mound with a 4-2 lead in the sixth, the speed of Straw once again terrorized the young shortstop and led to another error. It led to two runs in the inning.
July 23rd
This game was just sad. So many dumb, dumb plays. I’m not even going to recap it, just watch them kick the ball around:
I cannot believe all of that happened in one game. They made four official errors in this game, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse game of defense by a team that’s competing for a division title. Goodness.
So, is this fixable? Well, the main players involved in all of these shenanigans were Jazz at third base, Volpe, and Escarra, with Fried, Peraza, Rice, Bellinger, Jasson Domínguez, and Jorbit Vivas contributing. If we assume that the Yankees will continue to run the lineups they’ve been running for weeks now, almost all of these players will be non-factors or not in a position to screw up.
Jazz will hopefully never see an inning at third base again this year. Peraza is in Anaheim, and Vivas is in the minors. Domínguez will likely be reduced to pinch runner status this series, Escarra is the third catcher, and we all trust the normally great defenders Fried and Bellinger not to do that again. The X-factor is Anthony Volpe, who was absolutely brutal in both series at Rogers Centre, but was great and smooth at the position in the Wild Card Series and down the stretch this year:
The Yankees can mash. The Yankees have the frontline starting pitching despite their injuries. If they can get a lead to the eighth inning, they should be able to close it out. If they can avoid kicking around the ball like they did at Rogers Centre all season, they’ll be well-equipped for a return to the ALCS.
