Blue Jays takeaways: How sweep it is, especially in New York in the middle of a wild-card race

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This article was published 09/09/2021 (1812 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 6-4 win in The Bronx on Thursday:

It’s really tough to sweep a four-game series in the big leagues. It’s even tougher to sweep a four-game series on the road. Tougher still to sweep a four-game series on the road against a team that you’re trailing in the standings.

The Blue Jays accomplished all of that, finishing things up Thursday just as they did on Wednesday, with some late scoring to take a game that was tied going into the seventh.

The icing on the cake, as they moved to within half a game of the tumbling Yankees for the second wild-card spot in the American League — and within a game and a half of the idle Boston Red Sox for the first — is that the Jays have now won eight in a row overall, the last seven against teams that were ahead of them in the wild-card chase when the series started.

The cherry on top was a ninth-inning home run by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on Thursday, his 42nd of the season, which made the 22-year-old the youngest Jay to drive in 100 runs in a season. He’s about a year and a half younger than Vernon Wells was when Wells turned the trick in 2002.

José Berríos provided six outstanding innings in his third straight terrific outing. The Jays’ starters posted a combined ERA of 2.22 for the New York sweep, and they did it with their ace, Robbie Ray, sitting and watching. He’ll take the ball Friday night in the opener of a four-game series in Baltimore.

• Different results: With the Blue Jays up 1-0, Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton led off the bottom of the fourth with a rocket down the left-field line, scalded at 115.5 miles per hour. He broke out of the batter’s box as though he was going to have an easy double, never running with any urgency at all.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. went to play it off the wall in the corner and, as we’ve seen him do many times, threw an absolute seed to second base on the fly. When Marcus Semien caught the ball, Stanton was just starting his slide. He tried to swim around the tag and was called safe, but that call was overturned on replay, which clearly showed that Semien tagged Stanton on the thigh before he got to the bag.

Instead of having the tying run on second and nobody out, the Yankees wound up with nothing.

After Anthony Rizzo tied things up with his two-run homer in the sixth, Danny Jansen came to the plate with two out and nobody on in the seventh, and hit a line drive into the left-field corner. The Jays catcher sprinted out of the box and wound up being the one who got the easy double. Jansen scored two batters later on Bo Bichette’s flare single to centre.

• Great start: The Jays couldn’t have started the game any better. With George Springer still nursing his battered knee and mustachioed left-hander Nestor Cortes Jr. on the hill for the Yankees, Bichette was given the leadoff assignment and he started the game with, quite literally, the perfect leadoff hitter’s at-bat.

The 23-year-old took a first-pitch fastball for ball one, then fouled off six straight pitches — three fastballs, two sliders and a sinker — giving his teammates a look at pretty much everything Cortes has. He then took a two-strike changeup down and away to finish the trip through the lefty’s repertoire.

The next pitch was a fastball middle-in, and Bichette pounded it to left field. It found a home in the seats 408 feet away, the shortstop’s first hit of the series, and first the of three on the night. o better way to start a ball game.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness