TORONTO — Give up, Yankees fans?
No one could blame you for thinking there’s no way your team is beating the Blue Jays three in a row after what went down over the weekend at Rogers Stadium?
The Blue Jays got the better of the Yankees in the regular season winning eight of 13 games, including six of seven at home, and then just pummeled them in the first two games of a best-of-five Division Series.
The Yankees did the impossible on Sunday playing worse than they did the day before losing the series opener 10-1.
The 13-7 final in Game 2 looks somewhat respectable, but it was 11-0 through five innings with Yankees ace Max Fried long gone and Blue Jays 22-year-old rookie phenom Trey Yesavaege working on a no-hitter with 11 strikeouts in his fourth big-league start.
These weren’t just playoff losses.
They were beatings that have the Yankees down 0-2 heading home for Game 3 on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.
The Blue Jays hit eight homers in the two games and Yankees pitchers set a franchise record allowing 23 runs in a stretch of two postseason games.
The Yankees can tell themselves they didn’t give up scoring a touchdown and an extra point against the Blue Jays’ worst relievers, but all of those runs came in garbage time.
But here is some hope for you fans that already have giving up on the season and are screaming (once again) for Aaron Boone’s head on a platter, hope being Yogi Berra’s most famous Yogi-ism, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Let’s go back to 1960, the year Bill Mazeroski forever became to Yankees fans what Bucky (Bleeping) Dent is to Red Sox nation.
Baseball fans who know some history of the game can tell you the Pirates won the World Series that year on Maz’s famous Game 7 walkoff homer at Forbes Field, but how many know the Yankees’ three wins were 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0 slaughterings that were similar to the ones the Blue Jays unleashed this weekend?
A lot more recent, the Yankees lost the first two games of their 2017 ALDS in Cleveland, then won three in a row to take the series and advance to the ALCS. Aaron Judge brought that up in the Yankees clubhouse after Sunday’s debacle.
A generation earlier, the 2001 Yankees lost to the first at home to the Athletics is a best-of-five ALDS, then they won to Oakland and the series turned in Game 3 when Derek Jeter saved a run with one of the most memorable plays of his Hall of Fame career, his flip throw to the plate.
So while history won’t help the Yankees save their season this week once let alone three times, it does show their task is not impossible.
“Baseball is a funny game,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone after Game 2. “I know we’ll show up and be ready to go expecting to win Tuesday night. Obviously, it feels like the world’s caving in around you, you lose two games like that in their building where it doesn’t go right. But all of a sudden you go out there and win a ballgame on Tuesday, the needle can change.
“There’s been a lot of weird things that have happened in baseball this year. This would not be the weirdest, us rallying. We’ll come ready to go Tuesday, expect to win, and then look to win again and push it back here.”
The Yankees have the best starting pitchers lined up for the rest of the series. All-Star left-hander Carlos Rodon will start Game 3. That’s more than winnable.
If the Yankees survive to a Game 4, we’ll get to see what rookie Cam Schlittler does for an encore from his unforgettable postseason debut, eight scoreless innings with 12 strikeouts in the do-or-die Wild Card Series clincher over the Red Sox.
And if the Yankees hold court at Yankee Stadium and get back to Toronto, they’ll trust that they’ll get a much better Game 5 start from their ace. Fried was bombned for seven runs over three-plus innings in a Game 2 loss. but he led the majors with 19 wins this year and had a great start in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, 6 1/3 shutout innings.
“We haven’t lost any confidence,” Boone said. “Obviously (the Blue Jays) had our number and gotten the better of us so far this year, but I don’t think anyone in our room doesn’t feel like we can’t go out and beat them.
“We’ve got to play better. We’ve got to pitch and swing it better. But we’re certainly capable of it and we’ll expect to do that on Tuesday night.”
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