What was clear, however, is that the Blue Jays had much more control of the game during what is now a four-game winning streak after Saturday’s 5-2 victory over the trailing New York Yankees than they had during of 3-9. stretch that preceded. “It’s a real thing,” Snyder said before his team triumphed in the mismatch on paper between Mitch White and Gerrit Cole. “If you’re dictating the pace of the game at each end, it just allows you to do things you’re more comfortable with. It allows men to get out of the bullfight at the right time. “If you can score early, if you can make a good initial setup, things usually fall into place the way you plan.” By and large, that’s been the case over the past few days, although Saturday’s win certainly had a healthy dose of can’t-predict-ball, too. Through the first four innings, Cole didn’t allow a hit and faced just two batters over the minimum, while White was in constant motion, forced to navigate seven strikeouts and steady pressure. That might have been expected, but the Yankees, now 3-14 in their last 17 games, managed just one run despite the difference in offense and the Blue Jays’ relentless streak at the plate broke in the fifth. Santiago Espinal lined a double off the left-field wall to break up Cole’s no-hit bid, and Danny Jansen cut his belt short to draw a crucial four-pitch walk. Jackie Bradley Jr. followed up with his biggest moment with the Blue Jays so far, belting a two-run double into the right field corner for a 2-1 lead. “Huge at-bats from both of those guys,” Bradley said. “Danny wore him down a little bit, visited the mound and I knew he wanted to get going early. I swung at the first pitch for the first time at bat, so I wanted to see a pitch and then from there I wanted to be aggressive with my pitch, get something that I can handle and I was able to do it well.” Essentially, they kept the heat on, with a little help from the BABIP gods, as Raimel Tapia and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. both reached on singles to load the bases for Alejandro Kirk, who in his sixth at-bat hit a 99.6 mph fastball to left-center for a double. Guerrero, just yards behind Tapia who had to hold second in case the ball was caught, was thrown out at the plate a hair after the speedy infielder slid in safely. By the time the inning ended, the Blue Jays had the game firmly in hand, with a crowd of 45,538 anxious and booing their ace right-hander. One of them stood up and extended his middle finger at the Yankees dugout while yelling several words beginning with the letter “f.” Difficult city. “The guys worked the count,” Bradley said. “We managed to make some good changes. Obviously, Gerrit is a very tough competitor, a very good pitcher, and I felt like we could put some good at-bats with him toward the middle of the game and make them count.” The Yankees, of course, did not, and the Blue Jays experienced such misery earlier this week, underscoring how quickly things can change. That’s why Yankees manager Aaron Boone hit the table on his availability after the game, saying, “we’ve got to play better, period, and the great thing is it’s right in front of us. It’s right here. And we can fix it.” Cole criticized himself for letting a good start — helped by Aaron Judge’s leap off the right-field wall on a Bichette drive likely steal a home run — fail to strike out Jansen and fail to throw out Guerrero’s homer. “When you’re doing well, sometimes you cover up those mistakes,” he said, “and when you’re not, you just have to be sharp.” Over the past four games the Blue Jays have been just that, the completeness of their game turning the tide. Stripling’s return from the injured list with six perfect innings on Wednesday along with a crucial Bo Bichette bare-handed play on a Ryan Mountcastle infield ball helped set the stage for a breakthrough, and that level of attention to detail has followed ever since. . “You’re starting to hear guys say, look, we’ve got to … like we’ve got to do the little things and we’ve got to shore up the defense, we’ve got to fill the strike zone, the basics, which sounds so bad, but we’ve got to we do,” Stripling said. “You can’t show up and expect Vlady to hit a three-pointer every night or Gausman to go seven shutouts every night. Baseball is not going to work like that. You need everyone in the process – again, very apt – but that’s what it takes to win at this level, in a playoff game. You started to see that in the last couple of days. That’s what good teams do and you’re starting to see that.” White, making his first start since Yusei Kikuchi’s move to the rotation, did a nice job of limiting the damage, aided by five strikeouts. After the Blue Jays took the lead, Adam Cimber – the first of five relievers – hit Aaron Judge leading off the bottom half to start a three-up, three-out frame. “Obviously it’s not ideal to have all that action on the bases, but we made pitches when we had to,” White said of his four-inning, seven-hit, one-run outing. “In this situation with the way Gause was pitching the other night, and (Jose Berrios) as well, there’s a new ‘pen, so it’s my job to keep those first innings as clean as possible, not never give up and we’ve reached the ‘pen.” David Phelps and Anthony Bass each followed with a scoreless inning and, after Zach Pope allowed a solo shot to Gleyber Torres in the eighth and Matt Chapman answered with one of his own in the ninth, Jimmy Garcia — with Jordan Romano to fall after back-to-back days — closed ninth. “They know they’re really good,” Schneider said of his team. “Chappy Homer was amazing in the ninth inning to just say, ‘OK, yeah, we’re here.’ So they’re not going to back down from anyone.” Under the circumstances, the Blue Jays could not have game-planned better, taking control and then dictating the outcome.
