The Blue Jays faced Gerrit Cole for the second time in a week on Tuesday night in Buffalo, and they'll need to get used to it with the postseason approaching.

This young lineup of Blue Jays hitters have had tastes of aces along the way, including two Cole starts and a look at Jacob deGrom of the Mets, which they'll need to learn from. Tuesday's 12-1 loss to the Yankees offered another one of those lessons, as the right-hander limited Toronto to just one run on five hits with seven strikeouts and zero walks.

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Come October, the Blue Jays will need to find a way to grind out a few more runs when they run into an ace. Regardless of who Toronto lines up against in the Wild Card Series, it will be forced to face its best pitchers from the first pitch through to the final out.

In last week's 13-2 loss to the Yankees, it was Cole who struck out eight Blue Jays batters over seven innings of one-run work. The week prior, against deGrom, Toronto struck out nine times over six innings of one-run ball. It's a high bar for any lineup to rise to, but the Blue Jays will need to pull it off eventually.

Prior to facing Cole, manager Charlie Montoyo laid out a simple game plan for his hitters.

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"When you face elite pitchers, you don't want to be behind in the count," Montoyo said. "You've got to stop chasing. If you don't chase, you might have a chance to be ahead in the count. And if you get a chance, you'd better take advantage of that. If you don't, he's going to get you on the next pitch."

Montoyo's lineup didn't really get to Cole outside of Cavan Biggio's seventh home run of the season in the fourth inning, but the manager liked what he saw in the early innings, at least.

"I thought we did a good job," Montoyo said. "His pitch count was high. Of course, then he got that lead and somebody that good with that lead, he just dealt after that. Before that, we did a nice job getting his pitch count high."

What this emphasizes, then, is how Toronto's pitching is part of this equation when it's facing an elite starter, not just the lineup. The Blue Jays obviously weren't going to put up 13 runs against Cole to win this one, but if their pitching staff if able to keep the opponent within a few runs, then that opens the door to so many other ways to manufacture runs.

Tuesday's starter Tanner Roark struggled again, allowing six runs over 4 1/3 frames to balloon his ERA to 7.01, but the veteran right-hander still knows what this pitching staff needs to do over the final five games and playoff run.

"I feel like the whole team, we just need to take it one game at a time. Just keep winning," Roark said. "Whatever comes after that is out of our hands. We just need to take it like the cliche, one game at a time, and not look ahead."

The challenge of facing elite pitching is also why there can be such a gap between simply competing for the postseason and competing for a World Series championship. The Blue Jays don't need to look any further than the mirror.

While Toronto boasts Hyun Jin Ryu at the top of its rotation and a bullpen that's much improved, the Blue Jays clearly won't present as daunting a pitching matchup as the Yankees, who can go from Cole and Masahiro Tanaka to top-end relievers Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. Other contenders can go even deeper, which will be particularly valuable in the American League Championship Series and World Series, where aces can circle back for second starts in a seven-game series.