Yankees Eviscerated Twice by Toronto

.I’m not sure it could get any uglier than it did for the Yankees during their two-game collapse in Toronto. They were so badly overmatched that it was tough to watch, especially because the team performing the beatdown was the Blue Jays, a team I have grown to hate perhaps even more than the Red Sox. Just horrible in every way imaginable. Lets get to it. 

It will go down as one of the most embarrassing weekends in Yankees history, and while nothing will ever top blowing a three-games-to-none lead to the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS, this was about as bad as it has ever been for the Yankees in October.

They were outscored 23-8, out-hit 29-16, and they struck out 21 times across two horrifying, disgraceful losses to the god damn Blue Jays to start the AL Divisional Series.

Their performance in that hell hole of a stadium in Toronto was so utterly pathetic it’s hard to wrap my mind around it, but really, should we have been surprised?

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I mean come on, let’s be perfectly honest here. Anyone who watched this team all season - and most of you do or you wouldn’t be on my subscriber list - knew the Yankees probably weren’t going anywhere this season.

Sure, they were going to make the playoffs because how the hell could they not? The middle of the American League is woefully mediocre and it would have been an all-time colossal failure - a 2025 Mets-like epic failure - if the Yankees didn’t get into the seven-team field.

And OK, they showed some moxie by coming back to beat the Red Sox in the wildcard round, the first team to lose the opener and still win the series since the best-of-three format was invented a few years ago.

But were they going to make any real noise, which in Yankee parlance can mean only one thing and that’s winning a World Series, something that has eluded this franchise since 2009? We all knew the answer was no, because they kept telling us all summer long that they wouldn’t.

It was like the murderer handing over the bloody knife to the cops and confessing, “I did it.” They gave us a mountain of evidence for more than three months that despite being a team filled with high-paid stars, there were glaring deficiencies that would likely catch up to them once the postseason began. And that’s what happened at Rogers Centre which has become a house of horrors for the Yankees.

Their bullpen was putrid, they failed to hit in key spots - oh, until the meaningless five-run rally in the seventh inning Sunday when they were trailing 13-2 - and to top it off, their two starting pitchers put forth awful outings and gave them no chance to win in either game.

My God, what a disgraceful showing.

Now they go back to Yankee Stadium where they need to win twice just to stay alive, and all that would mean is a return trip north of the border where they’d be staring at Game 1 starter Kevin Gausman probably opposing Luis Gil again, and no, I give the Yankees no chance.

“There’s been a lot of weird things that have happened in baseball this year. This would not be the weirdest, us rallying,” said Aaron Boone, being the cheerleader that he is. “I know we’ll show up expecting to win Tuesday night.”

Maybe they’ll make me eat my words and put forth the rally of the century to win this series, but I doubt it.

“We’ve been doing it all year long,” Aaron Judge. “We’ve had our backs up against the wall and been in some tough spots. In the Wild Card Series, we lost the first one and played two elimination games. It’s kind of what we did even at the end of the year. We were chasing the division. We were out there and had to win every single game going down to the wire. So just get back to playing our brand of baseball, put the pressure on them, and anything can happen.”

Teams taking a 2-0 lead at home in the Division Series have won it 31 of 34 times (88.9%), including 20 sweeps, so no, I can’t see the Yankees doing to the Blue Jays what they did to the Red Sox.

Oct. 4: Blue Jays 10, Yankees 1

➤ Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in the end given the way the Yankees bullpen imploded. But what happened in the top of the sixth decided the opener. And it just hammered home the point that I make so much here that if the Yankees don’t hit home runs, their offense can be manhandled by good pitching, and that killed them when they had a golden opportunity to flip the script.

➤ They had nothing against Kevin Gausman, which is nothing new, but then suddenly Anthony Volpe doubled, Austin Wells singled, and Trent Grisham walked. Bases loaded, no outs, and the alleged meat of the order up. And then it all went to shit. Aaron Judge, as we often criticize him for, shrunk in the biggest moment, chasing a 3-2 splitter that landed somewhere near Mississauga. Cody Bellinger walked on four pitches to force in a run, but then Ben Rice, who looked clueless all day, got one good pitch to hit and popped out. And righty power arm Louie Varland relieved Gausman and whiffed clueless Giancarlo Stanton and the Yankees ended up with just that one run, and were still trailing 2-0.

➤ They were trailing because Vladimir Guerrero and Alejandro Kirk - who are about as evil a pair when they see the Yankees as David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez used to be - had homered in the first two innings off Luis Gil. And soon after their colossal failure in the sixth, the game turned into a laugher.

➤ I thought Boone had a too-quick hook on Gil after 2.2 innings. Yeah, he wasn’t great, but there was a man on first with two outs in the third. With his shitty bullpen, it was way too early to start rolling those guys out. However, because he did, that meant he was eventually going to get to someone who would puke all over himself, and that was Luke Weaver. Again.

➤ Tim Hill and Camilo Doval were great, combining for 3.1 scoreless innings to keep the Yankees in it. But then Weaver in the seventh went walk, single, single to make it 3-1. Weaver faced six men in his first two postseason outings and got no one out. He’s now unusable unless it’s a blowout either way. Fernando Cruz was next, and as always, you never know what you’re going to get with him, and what we got this time was garbage. He faced four batters, two reached, and the score became 6-1.

➤ Paul Blackburn took the eighth so Boone could rest whatever other stiff he was going to trout out, and he was brilliant. Four runs on six hits in what would have been a fine batting practice session. Embarrassing performance all around.

➤ The Yankees are now 2-2 in the postseason and they have in just six of the 34 innings that they’ve batted. And they have two home runs, by Volpe in Game 1 against the Red Sox and Rice in Game 2. It’s a tale as old as time, the postseason arrives and the vaunted Yankees offense sucks.

What they said in Saturday’s clubhouse

Gil: “They’re big league hitters, they’re there to swing the bat, and they were able to do that tonight. I wasn’t expecting that (getting pulled so early) but at the same time Boone’s the manager. He makes those calls.”

Bellinger: “Obviously, you’d like to come through there and break the game open. It didn’t happen; Gausman came and made some good pitches.”

Judge on his whiff: “I wouldn’t say I was overanxious; if you saw the whole at-bat, I definitely took some tough pitches. But in the end, I didn’t get the job done. That’s what it comes down to, just not doing your job. We’re going to keep the same mindset we’ve had all year: Keep focusing on today. This game is over with. It got out of hand and we couldn’t come back, but we’ve got a big game coming up. We’ve just got to take care of business.”

Oct. 5: Blue Jays 13, Yankees 7

➤ Oh, Judge was right about one thing. The Yankees kept the same mindset because they got humiliated once again, and this was 10 times worse because it came with their ace, Max Fried, doing a fine impression of Weaver, coming up incredibly small in a game the Yankees needed him to be great. Meanwhile, the rest of the team did a fine impression of the Game 3 Red Sox against Cam Schlittler, and again, this was 10 times worse because while Schlittler had 14 MLB starts under his belt, Jays starter Trey Yesavage had pitched 14 MLB innings before he took the mound and made Schlittler’s performance look lame.

➤ I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something so laughable. By the time Yesavage walked off the mound with one out in the sixth, the Yankees had no runs, no hits, and 11 strikeouts, while the Jays had 11 runs on 11 hits. This was like mid-1980s Mike Tyson knocking out some of those bums he fought at the start of his career, guys who knew they were going to get knocked out before the first round bell had even sounded.

➤ Fried absolutely sucked, and it started immediately. He gave up two singles in the first and was lucky escape when Kirk grounded into an inning-ending double play. The Blue Jays then scored in the next five innings, and seven of the runs were charged to Fried who was making the walk of shame to the clubhouse in the fourth inning. The pride of Rochester, Ernie Clement, hit a two-run homer in the second and his RBI single in the third made it 5-0. Then the first two men reached in the fourth so on came Will Warren, and pretty soon fat ass Guerrero hit a grand slam to make it 9-0. Warren was done throwing meatballs and before the fourth ended, Kirk singled and Daulton Varsho hit a two-run bomb.

➤ Naturally, you didn’t think George Springer was going to skip the party, did you? Solo homer in the fifth. And then Varsho hit another homer in the sixth. Warren was forced to eat this debacle, and at least he did as he ate 4.2 innings before Boone used Weaver to get the final out, and incredibly, he managed to do it without being scored upon in the eighth.

➤ Oh, those plucky Yankees didn’t just sit idly by, though. In about as low leverage a spot as possible, the moment Yesavage was replaced, Judge singled and Bellinger homered off some Blue Jays mop up guy so yay, they didn’t get shutout. And then they erupted for five runs in the seventh to get within 13-7, as if it even mattered. All that did was give Boone ammunition to pronounce how his team never gave up.

➤ In the big seventh, they somehow scored those runs without a homer as they strung together six hits, the last a two-run single by Stanton, but didn’t that just make you want to scream about all their incompetence that led to that point in the game?

➤ Judge had an RBI single as well, and he’s finished the night with a .444 postseason average, and it’s about the quietest .444 ever. He has five singles and a double so far, and as I mentioned above, he failed in the biggest moment of the first two games. It’s really frustrating that he can’t do more damage on the biggest stage.

What they said in Sunday’s clubhouse

Fried: “They obviously had a really good approach, they were on a lot of my pitches. Credit to them, I didn’t get it done. Obviously, we had a rough showing here and, obviously, we’d rather be up 2-0 than down 2-0. But we have a lot of faith in this club, and if there’s anyone that can win three in a row, we did down the stretch, and we believe in each other in here.”

Judge on Yesavage: “It was tough. First time seeing him, he was making his pitches. We kind of got it going there late but at that point it’s a little too late.”

Rice: “We did well with our backs against the wall against Boston and now we’re going to have to show we can do it again.”

So now it’s back to the Bronx for Game 3 Tuesday, and maybe Game 4 Wednesday. Can the Yankees extend this series? Sure. Could they possibly get it back Toronto. Maybe. Are they going to come all the way back to win it? That seems highly improbable to me.

By the way, MLB doesn’t make things easy so you’re going to need to hunt for FS1 in your channel lineup. This is not regular FOX, this is their sports channel. Hopefully you have access. Then again, the way this series has gone, maybe it would be good if you don’t.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

Tuesday, 8:08, FS1: Carlos Rodon (3.09 ERA) vs. Shane Bieber (3.57), the former Guardians ace who joined the Blue Jays while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, then made seven late-season starts and put up an impressive 1.017 WHIP in 40.1 innings.

Wednesday, 7:08, FS1 (if necessary): Cam Schlittler (2.96) vs. TBD.