The Yankees didn’t pull off one of the most dramatic postseason comebacks in history on their own.
Sure, the bullpen was fantastic, Aaron Judge shed his playoff issues and Jazz Chisholm Jr. delivered a huge blow.
But without some terrible defense from the typically solid Blue Jays, the Yankees’ 9-6 win in Game 3 of the ALDS likely wouldn’t have happened.
“We kind of just didn’t play our game, really,’’ Toronto manager John Schneider said of how the Yankees got back in the game. “When you look at things as a whole, just defensively, getting extra outs, things like that, and they can do that in a hurry.”
It began with former Yankee Isiah Kiner-Falefa botching Ben Rice’s hard grounder to second that would have ended a scoreless bottom of the first with Toronto still up by two runs.
But Kiner-Falefa booted the ball and then couldn’t pick it up in time.
Instead of the inning being over, Giancarlo Stanton followed with a run-scoring single to left to make it 2-1.
And then came the fourth inning, when Addison Barger — who pinch hit for Kiner-Falefa in the third and then went to third base in the bottom of the inning — dropped Austin Wells’ pop-up to shallow left.
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Wells hustled into second on the two-base error and after Trent Grisham walked, Judge brought the Yankees all the way back from what had been a five-run deficit with a three-run homer off Louis Varland that bounced off the left field foul pole.
The Blue Jays weren’t done with their miscues, as Anthony Santander failed to make a diving catch of Cody Bellinger’s liner to right in the sixth.
Judge went to third on the play and scored on Rice’s sacrifice fly to right to add an insurance run.
“It happens,’’ Schneider said of the miscues. “It gets magnified this time of year, sure … but you’ve got to take care of the ball.”
In all, the Blue Jays allowed a pair of unearned runs during the furious Yankees comeback and were unable to survive their mistakes.
“It can turn on you in a hurry,’’ Schneider said. “You’ve just got to kind of stop any kind of momentum. Walks and errors will kill you against this team. So I think that was kind of the tipping point a little bit.”