For better or worse, the Yankees so often go as Aaron Judge goes.
And so it took just one momentous swing to come back from the dead, courtesy of their captain, who performed CPR to breathe life into their season and his own postseason legacy.
In a game the Yankees once trailed by five runs in the third inning, staring down elimination, Judge crushed a towering three-run shot high off the left field foul pole to tie the game in the fourth inning.
The signature playoff moment that Judge had been missing opened the floodgates, as Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with a home run of his own an inning later, giving the Yankees their first lead of the series and sending them on their way to a 9-6 win over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the ALDS on Tuesday night in The Bronx.
“I know we were kind of down there early, but the energy in that dugout and what we were bringing was we knew we were going to go out there and just leave it all on the field,” Judge said. “We knew we were going to try to come back there. And getting a chance to tie it up like that, I liked our chances going into it, especially with our bullpen and our guys down there and the way our offense has kind of been rolling.”
On a night when the Blue Jays raced out to an early 6-1 lead against Carlos Rodón, the Yankees bullpen delivered 6 ²/₃ shutout innings to extend the season and make sure Judge’s moon shot mattered. Fernando Cruz (four outs), Camilo Doval (three outs), Tim Hill (four outs) and Devin Williams (four outs) provided the bridge to David Bednar, who delivered a five-out save.
Judge’s dramatic game-tying homer, which sent the sellout crowd of 47,399 into pandemonium, punctuated an all-around standout game for the potential third-time MVP. He went 3-for-4 with a double, home run, walk, four RBIs and three runs, and added a terrific diving catch in the top of the fifth at a time when the Blue Jays had the go-ahead run at second base.
“It was best-player-in-the-game type performance,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It was special when, obviously needless to say, we’re backs against the wall and then some in a Game 3 situation.”
Just like that, there is a path for the Yankees, who will send Cam Schlittler to the mound for Game 4. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are set to throw a bullpen game on Wednesday, on the heels of having to use six relievers to get through Tuesday after Shane Bieber lasted just 2 ²/₃ innings.
If the Yankees are going to force a winner-take-all Game 5 in Toronto, they will need to add to their 3-0 record in potential elimination games this postseason.
“Tonight was special, but there’s still more work to be done,” Judge said. “Hopefully we have some more cool moments like this the rest of the postseason. We’ve got another big game [Wednesday] night. Maybe we can do something special [Wednesday] night and talk to all of you all one more time before we head back up north.”
Judge, who came into the night 8-for-18 with seven singles and one double this postseason, had gotten a chance for a signature moment earlier this series in Game 1, but he struck out with the bases loaded and no outs in the sixth inning of a game the Yankees trailed 2-0. The missed opportunity, which gave way to a 10-1 loss, seemed to be lingering over the rest of the series until he walked to the plate again in the fourth inning of Game 3, trailing 6-3 but with two men on and one out.
Hard-throwing righty Louis Varland got ahead 0-2 before unleashing a 99.7 mph inside fastball that Judge turned on and sent into the October night. He paused at home plate to watch it fly, making sure it went fair before flipping his bat and rounding the bases to a hero’s ovation as he tied it 6-6.
“I guess a couple ghosts out there helped kind of keep that fair,” Judge said, capitalizing on a rally that began with the wind helping Austin Wells reach on a dropped pop-up by third baseman Addison Barger — the second Blue Jays error of the night, both of them leading to runs.
Chisholm also took Varland deep in the fifth inning, his on a 99 mph fastball down the middle that he connected on to put the Yankees up 7-6.
In 22 innings in this series before Chisholm’s lined shot, the Blue Jays had led after 21 of them, the other one being a 0-0 tie after the top of the first in Game 2.
And the 6-1 lead the Blue Jays had after two and a half innings in Game 3 seemed daunting, except to those who had been on the wrong side of a blown 5-0 lead to the Dodgers in the decisive Game 5 of the World Series last October.
“My thought is it happened to us before,” Chisholm said, “so why couldn’t it happen to them?”
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