Yankees, Blue Jays meet in power-packed AL Division Series: Key matchups, prediction

By: Mitch Bannon, Chris Kirschner and Eno Sarris

The Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees will meet in the postseason for the first time, but the matchup still holds plenty of familiarity. The two teams danced all year in the American League East, chasing down each other’s significant leads and trading momentum-swinging series wins. Now they’ll meet for a best-of-five in October to earn a spot in the American League Championship Series.

The Jays won eight of 13 meetings with the Yankees this year, buoyed by a four-game sweep in July that pushed Toronto to the top of the division for the first time. It’s a spot the Jays never relinquished, though the Yankees pulled into a tie on the season’s final weekend. The Jays ultimately won the East, and have home-field advantage in this matchup, because of the tiebreaker earned by winning the season series.

Both sides have unknowingly prepared for this series all season, but now the divisional matchup heads to October. For a fifth and final series, the Yankees and Blue Jays will meet again.

Game times

Game 1: Saturday, 4:08 p.m. ET
Game 2: Sunday, 4:08 p.m. ET
Game 3: Tuesday
Game 4*: Wednesday
Game 5*: Oct. 10
* – if necessary

Eno’s prediction

Yankees in five

The Blue Jays can maybe pitch as well as the Yankees, if you consider their entire staffs. They will glove it better than the Yankees. But that pinstriped offense is a huge edge. While the Jays won’t shoot themselves in the foot with bad defense, and make good contact at the plate, the Yankees hit for power better than any team in baseball. That relentless offense will eventually neutralize the Jays’ more well-rounded team build.

Strengths and weaknesses

Biggest strength: Relentless contact is Toronto’s defining feature. The Jays own baseball’s lowest strikeout rate and highest batting average. They don’t always get a game-changing homer, but the Jays stack together big innings the hard way.

Biggest weakness: At one point, the Jays were flush with rotation depth. Now, it’s a clear weak point. José Berríos will not pitch in the DS. Max Scherzer stumbled through September. Chris Bassitt hasn’t pitched in 15 days with a back injury, but could return to the staff this series. The rotation thinning puts a huge burden on Shane Bieber and Kevin Gausman to haul innings, as well as rookie Trey Yesavage.

Biggest strength: The Yankees can outslug any team. They led MLB with 274 home runs, 30 more than the Los Angeles Dodgers. They escaped a wild-card matchup against Boston, hitting just two home runs, and none of them came from Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton. If either one of these sluggers gets hot, things can get sideways quickly for the Blue Jays.

Biggest weakness: Can anyone in the bullpen emerge outside of David Bednar and Devin Williams? Toronto’s offense is more potent than Boston’s; the Blue Jays should put much more pressure on the Yankees’ starters than the Red Sox did. The Yankees only used four relievers in the Wild Card Series (Bednar, Williams, Fernando Cruz and Luke Weaver). They’ll likely need more arms ready to go.

Key matchups

Yankees’ fielding vs Blue Jays’ contact: The Blue Jays’ offense applies pressure, forcing opposing defenses to field balls in play. They led baseball in contact rate and team batting average this year. Across seven games in early June and July, the Yankees felt that pressure. New York committed 11 errors across the seven contests, with Toronto winning six of the games to shoot up the division standings.

But this is a different Yankee team. Anthony Volpe rediscovered his fielding, sure-handed Ryan McMahon is in at third base and Jasson Domínguez moved to the bench. In September, the Yankees finished ninth in Statcast’s fielding run value. The Jays will try to apply pressure once again this series. Will the new-look Yankees fend it off?

Jeff Hoffman vs 9th inning homers: Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman finished with the fourth-most saves in baseball. But he also allowed more homers (15) than any other American League reliever, blew seven saves and posted a 4.37 ERA. The Toronto closer’s velocity waned as the season went on — a combination of a heavy workload and sliding arm mechanics. He limited runs in September, but ninth innings remained tense down the stretch.

The Yankees hit more homers than any team in baseball this year, including 15 long balls in the ninth inning. Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe each hit three ninth-inning blasts. Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells and Ben Rice each launched a pair. Rice clipped Hoffman for a game-winning homer in July. If the Yankees head to the ninth inning down by a run or two this series, the game will be far from over.

Yankee lefty bats vs Brendon Little: Of the 14 hitters the Yankees brought to the wild-card round, seven were left-handed. The Yankees received the third-most plate appearances from lefty hitters this year.

The Jays are set to send four right-handed starting pitchers to the mound in the Division Series, meaning New York will likely stack their lineups with the lefties. When John Schneider turns to the bullpen, he’ll likely ask Brendon Little, Toronto’s top leverage lefty, to handle those bats. Ben Rice is the only active Yankee lefty with an extra-base hit against Little.

Little’s control wavered throughout the season, but he found the zone with a reformed cutter in September. The lefty threw 9 2/3 innings with a 2.79 ERA in the final month, but his biggest innings will come in October.

Tale of the tape

The fact that this is a five-game series helps mitigate the Yankees’ advantage in the rotation a little bit. In fact, if you look at certain projections, you’ll see smaller projected ERAs for the top three Blue Jays than the top three Yankees. But that might be an artifact of the parks they play in, to some extent, and Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, and now Cam Schlittler certainly looked excellent in the Wild Card Series. Then you have the Yankees’ large power edge. Otherwise, the Blue Jays own advantages in the other facets of the game – they might be the top defense in baseball, and nobody struck out less.

Mitch’s X-factor, 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: In his first six career postseason games, Guerrero Jr. posted a .136 average and .422 OPS. Now he’s the man the Blue Jays paid $500 million. He’s the undisputed face of the franchise and a core piece of the lineup for the next decade or more. It’s time for him to deliver in October.

Chris’ X-factor, 1B Ben Rice: All Ben Rice does is hit the ball as hard as he can. Outside of Judge, Rice might be the Yankees’ best hitter. With Toronto expected to start all right-handed pitchers in this series, it should mean Rice plays every game. If he continues mashing, that’s just another threat at the top of the order.

(Photo: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)