For the Yankees, the scene was all too acquainted.
For the second yr in a row, opponents spilled out of the guests’ dugout and mobbed one another on the Yankee Stadium grass.
Final yr, it was the Los Angeles Dodgers who clinched their World Sequence title within the Bronx.
On Wednesday evening, it was the Toronto Blue Jays doing the celebrating after defeating the Yankees in Recreation 4 of the ALDS.
However for the Yankees, the outcome was in the end the identical. Wednesday’s 5-2 loss to the Blue Jays introduced an unceremonious finish to the Yankees’ season and prolonged their championship drought to 16 years.
“You don’t like seeing somebody celebrate on your field,” Aaron Decide stated afterward. “It’s just, I guess, good fuel going into the offseason.”
The offseason comes sooner than anticipated for a Yankees workforce that was motivated to take the ultimate step after final yr’s American League pennant. The Blue Jays — the Yankees’ Achilles heal all season — proved once more to be the superior workforce by successful the ALDS, 3-1.
Toronto outscored the Yankees, 34-19, over the 4 video games, however Wednesday evening’s clincher was far more about missed alternatives by the Yankees than it was an overwhelming exhibiting from the Jays’ loaded lineup.
The Blue Jays deployed a bullpen recreation, and the Yankees managed solely six hits towards eight Toronto relievers.
The Yankees stranded at the least two baserunners within the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, the final of which ended when Austin Wells, who represented the tying run, flew out with the bases on the primary pitch he noticed from nearer Jeff Hoffman.
The Yankees completed 1-for-6 with runners in scoring place and left 10 males on base.
“We didn’t execute when we needed to,” Giancarlo Stanton stated. “The importance of each game. The importance of mistakes. The importance of good at-bats in big moments. Timely at-bats. Timely pitches. We just didn’t do it as well as they did.”
The Yankees fell into an 0-2 sequence gap after back-to-back blowout losses in Toronto, however they regained momentum with Tuesday evening’s instant-classic 9-6 win in Recreation 3 within the Bronx. They overcame a five-run deficit to take action, with Decide’s game-tying three-run house run serving as the most important blow.
That they had purpose for confidence going into Recreation 4 as they despatched rookie phenom Cam Schlittler to the mound.
Schlittler was six days faraway from a traditionally dominant postseason debut through which he hurled eight shutout innings with 12 strikeouts in final week’s winner-take-all Wild Card Recreation 3 towards the Boston Purple Sox.
And whereas Schlittler wasn’t as devastating on Wednesday — he struck out solely two — he restricted the Jays to 2 earned runs over 6.1 innings.
Schlittler surrendered an RBI single to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. within the first inning and a sacrifice fly to George Springer within the fifth, the latter of which gave Toronto the lead for good.
However the Blue Jays didn’t draw back till the seventh inning, when Jazz Chisholm Jr. booted a one-hopper off the bat of Andres Gimenez. Had Chisholm give you the ball, he may have turned an inning-ending double play.
As an alternative, the error put runners on the corners and ended Schlittler’s evening. Each runners would rating on Nathan Lukes’ two-out, two-run single towards Devin Williams, which gave Toronto a 4-1 lead.
“I didn’t think it was gonna play the way it played,” Chisholm stated. “I’ve been thinking about that since the play happened. Still thinking about it now. Can’t get it out of my head, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to move on eventually. I’ve got three months to move on now.”
Decide remained scorching in Recreation 4, going 2-for-4 with a ninth-inning RBI single. He completed this postseason 13-for-26 (.500) with seven RBI and a 1.273 OPS in seven video games.
However Guerrero went 9-for-17 (.529) with three house runs, 9 RBI and a 1.609 OPS within the ALDS, additional cementing his standing as a Yankee killer.
“You play to win,” Decide stated. “When you don’t win, it’s not a good year.”
The Yankees and Blue Jays each went 94-68 within the common season, however Toronto earned the AL East crown after successful the head-to-head sequence, 8-5.
That gave Toronto a first-round bye, home-field benefit and a chance to set its pitching because the Yankees engaged in a hard-fought Wild Card sequence towards the Purple Sox.
These edges mattered within the ALDS, and now the Blue Jays are those heading to the ALCS, the place they are going to face the winner of the Seattle-Detroit sequence.
The Yankees, in the meantime, should wait at the least another yr for his or her first championship since 2009.
“The ending’s the worst, right?” supervisor Aaron Boone stated. “Especially when you know you have a really good group and a group of guys that really came together so well at the right time, the final couple of months. This was a team that played for one another, did a lot of really good things, and we got beat here.”
Initially Revealed: October 8, 2025 at 10:38 PM EDT
