NEW YORK — Up five runs, the Toronto Blue Jays were headed to a three-game sweep of the New York Yankees and their first trip to the AL Championship Series in nine years.
And then it slipped out of their gloves.
A pair of errors by Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Addison Barger revived the Yankees, who then rode home runs by Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. off Louis Varland to a 9-6 victory.
“Sloppy brand of baseball,” Kiner-Falefa said.
Instead of preparing to host Seattle or Detroit at Rogers Centre this weekend, the Blue Jays’ lead in the best-of-five series was cut to 2-1 heading into Game 4 at Yankee Stadium.
“You’re talking about giving a really good team extra outs.” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “Walks and errors will kill you against this team.”
Varland gave up a homer to Judge while making his major league debut for Minnesota on Sept. 7, 2022. This one was a three-run drive that tied the score 6-6 in the fourth.
Judge’s homer was the first on a 99 mph or faster pitch 1.2 feet inside from the center of the strike zone since pitch tracking started in 2008, according to MLB Statcast.
“He made a really good pitch look really bad,” said Varland, who will start Game 4 as an opener.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a two-run, first-inning homer off Carlos Rodón and is batting .693 (8 for 13) with three homers and eight RBIs in the series. The Blue Jays lost after leading by five runs for the first time since Sept. 3, 2024, against Philadelphia, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“Flush it tonight. That’s all you can do, and bounce back tomorrow and come out and win a series,” said Toronto starter Shane Bieber, who lasted just 2 2/3 innings.
Kiner-Falefa, a 2020 Gold Glove winner at third, allowed Ben Rice’s two-out grounder in the bottom of the first to kick off the heel of his glove. The ball bounced off his chest and fell to the dirt, and Kiner-Falefa inadvertently kicked it as Rice reached. Giancarlo Stanton followed with an RBI single that cut the lead in half.
“Big error by me right there,” Kiner-Falefa said. “It just took a high hop. I was expecting a lower-hit ball. I felt like I did a good job knocking it down, just wasn’t able to stop the spin on the ground.”
With the Blue Jays ahead 6-3 in the fourth, one out and no one on, Austin Wells lofted a pop to left. Third baseman Barger, who had entered as a pinch hitter in the third, settled under the ball in short left only for the wind to blow the ball toward the seats. The ball hit off his glove and bounced into foul territory as Wells reached second.
“The wind was kind of weird all night. You could see early on that it was kind of swirling up top,” Barger said. “I thought I was camped under it.”
Trent Grisham walked, and Varland relieved and got ahead of Judge 0-2. The 27-year-old right-hander, acquired from the Twins at the trade deadline, threw a 99.7 mph fastball that the two-time AL MVP drove high down the left-field line.
Varland craned his neck, tried to wish the ball foul and watched it clang high off the foul pole. Judge made a rare bat flip.
“I guess a couple ghosts out there helped kind of keep that fair,” Judge said.
Then in the fifth, Varland left a 99.4 mph fastball low and inside for Chisholm, rarely a good pitch to a left-handed hitter in Yankee Stadium. Varland crouched and bowed his head even before Chisholm’s no-doubt drive bounced out of the second deck in right for a 7-6 lead.
Anthony Santander, in an image fitting of Toronto’s night, was prone in right, face in the grass, after he failed to come up with a backhand catch on Cody Bellinger’s liner in the sixth, which bounced to the warning track for a double.
In a quiet Blue Jays clubhouse after midnight, players looked ahead to Game 4 and another chance to close out the series and avoid a Game 5 in Toronto.
“Hopefully do what we did the first two games,” Kiner-Falefa said, “and if it doesn’t work out, we get to go home.”
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