Gausman’s 10 strikeouts lead Blue Jays to series win over Yankees

NEW YORK — Yankee Stadium is where great postseason scripts are written, and the Blue Jays just used it as the backdrop for their own dress rehearsal.

Wednesday night’s 6-1 win over the Yankees is what October will need to look like for Toronto. This team is built to pitch well, defend well and scrape across a few more runs than the other guys, making this the best blueprint we’ve seen in weeks.

Getting to the postseason is step one, but the Blue Jays continue to help themselves with wins in the Bronx. Wednesday marked their fifth victory in a row. The Mariners, Rangers and Astros all won too, but with seven games still remaining between Seattle and Texas, the Blue Jays’ recent wins are their own version of running out the clock.

Until New York’s bullpen absolutely unraveled in the eighth and ninth innings, this game had every feature of a Kevin Gausman classic, right down to a lack of offense.

A year after Gausman was cursed with some of the worst batted-ball luck in MLB history, he’s spent 2023 cursed with low run support. Regardless of which crimes Gausman committed in a past life to bring this his way, he’s pitched through it brilliantly, building another of the most dominant seasons in Blue Jays history.

With 10 fanned batters over six scoreless innings, Gausman’s 232 strikeouts trail only Robbie Ray (248) and Roger Clemens (271, 292) for a single season in franchise history. He’s fit every definition of the word “ace,” but now that is when it matters most.

Gausman pitched with a one-run lead for most of his outing, thanks to a string of hits from Kevin Kiermaier, George Springer and finally Bo Bichette, who is starting to scorch the ball again. The Blue Jays didn’t break it open until the late innings, picking up a pair of RBI walks in the eighth and adding three more runs in the ninth — including a second RBI single by Bichette.