Folks, we’re not in the sugar-coating business.
The first two games of the ALDS between the Yankees and the Blue Jays have not resembled a competition amongst equals so much as an unsupervised, overcaffeinated seven-year-old brutalizing a piñata. After getting dismantled 10-1 in the series opener, Max Fried and the Yankees showed up to a pivotal Game 2 and quickly proved they had nothing of value to offer. They surrendered 12 unanswered runs in the first five innings before the offense finally woke
up to slather some lipstick on a 13-7 feral hog of a ballgame. The Bombers are staring down the barrel of an early series exit as the series mercifully shifts back to Yankee Stadium.
While regular season trends often fade from relevance as the lights get brighter for the playoffs, these two noncompetitive Yankee losses were a continuation of a year-long theme: their absolute futility at Rogers Centre. With that fact in mind, a building has won our “Player of the Game” for the first time. Probably.
This is of course not to handwave or diminish the Blue Jays’ performance yesterday. Rookie starter Trey Yesavage was just as overpowering against the hapless Yankee lineup as Cam Schlittler was against the Red Sox on Thursday night. The aggressive Blue Jays lineup pounced on Max Fried and ran up the score with little difficulty. And hey, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. still has to hit that Will Warren pitch that he took out for a grand slam which provided the killshot in the fourth inning. Playoff games are often won at the margins. Toronto made the margins disappear, while making the Yankees look like my alma mater’s baseball team. (Note: Goucher College does not have a baseball team.)
It’s hard to fathom just how bad the Yankees have been north of the border this year. In the regular season they dropped six of seven games at the barn once known as the Skydome—surrendering a grand total of 52 runs in the process. A Ben Rice go-ahead home run in the ninth inning on July 22nd was the only thing that prevented a clean sweep for the Jays. Little did we know that the worst chapter had yet to be written: two utterly laughable losses of comical margins, in the playoffs, with the whole continent watching. The 10-1 floundering the day before combined with this 13-7 beatdown increase Toronto’s tally to 75 runs in nine games. That’s an average of 8.3 runs per game. An obscene number.
What was it about this field that made the Yankees—particularly Yankee pitchers—put together such abominable performances which utterly shredded any positivity one could muster for this team and the rest of this series (which, unfortunately, must continue with Game 3 on Tuesday)? It’s hard to say. After all, the Yankees and Blue Jays finished with identical regular season records, so you can’t exactly claim Toronto to be obviously superior. The Yankees took both series against the Jays at Yankee Stadium this year with little trouble. While the first of those matchups came in April, before the Blue Jays had completed their transformation into a powerhouse, the second came in September as the two teams were duking it out for the all-important division title and first-round bye.
Now, one notable difference between Rogers Centre and Yankee Stadium is the turf surface. The Bombers have performed poorly on turf this year, but I hardly find that to be a relevant data point for these games. After all, the Jays hit five home runs last night and three the night before—the Yankees have only managed one. The turf surface has no impact on homers or indeed on the pitcher’s mound, which is where New York’s biggest troubles in this stadium have taken place. It would almost make more sense if the Bombers couldn’t find a way to score there—you could maybe chalk that up to a sightline issue. Maybe the batter’s eye is disagreeable, something like that. But they’ve actually managed some decent offensive performances here and there—the pitching has simply been abominable. When it comes down to it, there may not be any culprit you can identify for why they could not measure up to the Blue Jays’ ankles in that building. It’s just…one of those things. Which is a torturous conclusion at which to arrive.
Regardless, the reverberations of those regular season defeats up north are obvious: if they could have snatched just one more win out of those seven regular season games in Toronto, they could have repeated as AL East division champions, receiving a whole week to prepare for this series, as well as the luxury of ducking Rogers Centre until Game 3—or entirely, if the Jays lost to the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series. The Yankees will rue their inability to accomplish that not-so-tall task.
Now, the Yankees once again find themselves with their backs against the wall as they were against Boston. This time though, they’ll have to find a way to win three consecutive games instead of two, while trying to navigate simultaneous meltdowns from their lineup and their pitching staff. If ever there were a time for aura and mystique to play a part in this series, now would be the time. But for the moment, it’s clear that the Blue Jays have captured some aura and mystique of their own in their home ballpark—at least against the Yankees. Their home-field advantage certainly seems to have helped them flatten the Bombers in Game 2.
