TORONTO -- The Blue Jays and Yankees have met 738 times. Combined, the two teams have made 41 postseason appearances and won nine World Series championships since Toronto’s inaugural season in 1977. The clubs have battled it out in the vaunted, heated American League East for decades.
However, the Blue Jays and Yankees have never met in the playoffs -- until Saturday, when the division rivals open an AL Division Series matchup at Rogers Centre.
Does the familiarity among the foes add a bit of spice to the energy and excitement that already accompanies October baseball?
“Yeah -- they want to get after us, we want to get after them,” Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman said. “There’s probably a little bit of added something. I don’t know if it’s visible to the naked eye. But in our own heads, ‘Yeah, we want to beat these guys.’”
The AL East has long been considered a stacked division. It’s fun to watch those teams face off, and even more so when their paths cross in the postseason. Fans already experienced it earlier this week, when the Yankees outdueled the rival Red Sox in a best-of-three Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium by bouncing back from a Game 1 loss to win both Games 2 and 3.
Next up for the Bronx Bombers is the Blue Jays, fresh off their first AL East title since 2015, which earned them a few days of rest while the Yanks and Sox battled for a trip to Toronto.
“I'm sure it will be raucous. I'm sure it will be a great environment,” New York manager Aaron Boone said. “We've played in a lot of important regular-season games up here and know how passionate it can get. I would expect that in overdrive.”
The Blue Jays may be the division champions, but they understand they could be viewed as underdogs against the Yankees, last year’s AL champs eyeing a return to the World Series.
“They're a good team. I think they have a lot of big-name players,” Toronto manager John Schneider said. “They've got a lot of hype around them and probably were favored to win the division when this season started. You can't ignore their talent.”
As AL East counterparts, the Blue Jays are giving the Yankees their appropriate respect. The lineup is stacked with sluggers and former MVPs like Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt. The pitching staff is strong, with a bunch of flamethrowers at the back of the bullpen.
It’s easy to see how New York could be poised for another deep run through October.
“They’re obviously playing really good baseball,” Blue Jays outfielder George Springer said. “They can hit homers with the best of them. They can kind of make an inning snowball on you. They have an extremely hard bullpen and four or five starters who know what to do.”
“And they have experience in the playoffs,” added fellow Toronto outfielder Anthony Santander, whose time in the AL East dates back to his tenure in Baltimore from 2017-24. “But our mentality is not thinking about them. It’s more about us -- be relaxed, do what we did in the regular season and go out there and compete.”
In the regular season, the Blue Jays went 8-5 against the Yanks, a needed tiebreaker after both teams finished 94-68. New York got swept in a four-game series at Rogers Centre from June 30-July 3, as the Jays jumped into first place in the AL East and led the rest of the way.
Toronto hasn’t won a postseason game since 2016. It now has a core centered around Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Springer, Kevin Gausman (the ALDS Game 1 starter) and others, giving the Blue Jays enough star power to match up well with the Yankees.
“I think I’ve got to lock in on what I do, understanding that they have a pretty good lineup. There are many other teams in the league that have very good lineups. You get to face them throughout the year,” said right-hander Luis Gil, New York’s Game 1 starter, through an interpreter. “But for me, it's to lock in and really focus.”
“We’re just going to have to play our game and do what we do,” Yankees outfielder Trent Grisham added. “They’re just a good baseball team.”
That sentiment describes both clubs in this ALDS, which could evolve into a tightly contested dogfight between the teams that finished with the best records in the AL this season.
“We technically tied in the regular season,” Blue Jays infielder Ernie Clement said. “We’re going up against a really, really good team. I think they’re probably the second-best team in the AL.”