The Blue Jays challenged anyone other than Aaron Judge to beat them.
Eventually, DJ LeMahieu did.
LeMahieu’s walk-off single capped the Yankees’ 4-3 win in 10 innings on Sunday, delivering a dramatic finish in the Bronx on a day Toronto issued three more intentional walks to Judge.
The extra-inning heroics clinched the Yankees’ third consecutive series win and gave them seven victories in their last eight games.
Toronto was up, 2-0, when it intentionally walked Judge in the fifth inning with two outs and Juan Soto on first. It trailed, 3-2, when it walked him again in the seventh with nobody out and the bases empty.
The third intentional walk of Judge — which loaded the bases with two outs in the eighth inning — came in a more traditional situation, with the game tied, 3-3.
Those followed an intentional walk of Judge in the second inning of Saturday’s game with two outs and nobody on. That marked the first time since 1972 that a player received an intentional walk with two outs and the bases empty within the first two innings of a game.
Before Toronto started walking him, Judge struck first-inning home runs in Friday and Saturday’s games, boosting his MLB-best homer total to 41. His 103 RBI also lead the majors.
Soto nearly played the role of hero on Sunday hours before LeMahieu’s walk-off. Soto broke a 2-2 tie with a seventh-inning solo home run that bounced off the top of the wall in left-center field and landed in Yankee Stadium’s visiting bullpen.
That lead didn’t even hold up for an inning, however, as Toronto tied the game, 3-3, after an apparent miscommunication between Judge in left field and Trent Grisham in center allowed Joey Loperfido’s leadoff fly ball to drop. Judge was making his fifth start of the season in left because Alex Verdugo got a day off.
Loperfido ended up on second base with what went down as an error on Grisham. Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle walked two of the next three batters, loading the bases with one out. Clay Holmes entered in relief and gave up a deep sacrifice fly to Alejandro Kirk that tied the game, 3-3, before escaping further damage.
A one-hour-and-49-minute rain delay followed before play resumed in the bottom of the eighth.
Soto had his right hand checked out after sliding into second base on an eighth-inning double but remained in the game. It’s the same hand that has bothered Soto for several weeks.
All of that occurred after Yankees ace Gerrit Cole turned in a solid performance in his first start since he was scratched with fatigue last week.
Cole limited the Blue Jays to two runs on six hits over 5.2 innings, striking out four without issuing a walk.
Toronto jumped on Cole early, repeatedly swinging early in counts and making hard contact to the tune of five hits through two innings. Both of the Blue Jays’ runs against Cole came in the second inning, when Addison Barger ripped an RBI double and Ernie Clement added a two-out RBI single.
But Cole got better as the outing went on. A double by Vladimir Guerrero to lead off the third inning marked the final hit allowed by Cole, who retired 10 of his last 11 batters. He punctuated his afternoon with a strikeout of Dalton Varsho on his 91st and final pitch.
It was the eighth start of the season for Cole, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, who missed the first three months of the year being diagnosed during spring training with elbow inflammation and edema.
Cole hadn’t pitched since July 24, when he surrendered three homers and six runs in a 12-3 loss to the Mets. He was scratched Tuesday in Philadelphia with what the Yankees described as general body fatigue.
On Sunday, Cole lowered his ERA to 5.09 through eight starts.
The Yankees have now won seven of their last eight games and three consecutive series. They’re off Monday, then continue a season-long nine-game homestand by kicking off a three-game series against the Angels on Tuesday night.
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