TORONTO — David Bednar walked off the Rogers Centre mound in the ninth inning on Sunday having done the one thing a closer cannot. He had blown the save. The Yankees’ 2-1 lead was gone, the game was tied, and the man who created the mess was not even the pitcher.
An inning later, Bednar was the winning pitcher. Baseball rarely rewards a reliever so generously for a job left undone, but that is how strange the Yankees’ afternoon turned.
New York beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3 in 10 innings, snapping a three-game losing streak and avoiding a sweep. The win moved the Yankees to 69-55 and, with Tampa Bay losing 10-2 to Baltimore, pulled them within 5 1/2 games of the Rays in the AL East. It was the first ground the Yankees had gained in the division since Aug. 2.
The victory did not come cleanly. Almost nothing has for this club lately. The Yankees needed a defensive gaffe, a blown save, an overturned replay and a 10th-inning home run to escape a game their pitching had nearly won for them outright.
Bednar’s blown save unravels a tidy lead
The ninth inning began with the Yankees ahead 2-1 and Bednar working a five-out save. He never should have been in trouble. Pinch-hitter Josh Smith rolled a soft grounder to first base, and Ben Rice booted it, putting the leadoff man aboard on an error.
Bednar compounded the mistake. He walked Alejandro Kirk to put two on with nobody out. After a George Springer popout, he bounced a two-strike curveball past catcher Ali Sánchez, moving both runners into scoring position. Ernie Clement then tied the game with a sacrifice fly.
The blown save was Bednar’s third of the season. He recovered to strand the go-ahead run at second base and force extra innings, keeping the Yankees alive despite the damage.
Rice turns an error into redemption
Rice had every reason to sink into the moment. His error had erased the lead. He had also entered the game mired in an ugly slump, and he began the day 0-for-4, dropping him to 10-for-85 over his previous 23 games.
Then he ended it. Leading off the top of the 10th against Braydon Fisher, Rice turned on a 2-0 slider and drove it 438 feet into the right-field seats. The two-run homer, his 33rd of the season, put the Yankees back ahead 4-2.
Rice offered no defense of the error afterward. He kept his answer short and blunt.
“Play’s got to be made,” Rice said.
He explained that the quick turnaround left no time to dwell on the mistake before he had to hit again.
“Honestly, the way baseball is, you don’t really have any time to think about anything,” Rice said. “Especially you have that tough error and then right away there’s another batter coming up and you got to be ready for that situation.”
Manager Aaron Boone framed the swing as the mark of a veteran shaking off a bad moment.
“I know no one’s feeling worse at that point than Benny,” Boone said. “To come up there and essentially win the game for us in the 10th was massive. Credit to him. And that’s this game, that’s being a big leaguer.”
Weathers keeps rescuing a broken offense
Lost in the late chaos was another gem the Yankees nearly wasted. Left-hander Ryan Weathers outdueled Toronto ace Dylan Cease, allowing one run on six hits over 7 1/3 innings. He retired the first 10 batters he faced and walked one.
Weathers has become the rotation’s steadiest arm. He now carries a 0.85 ERA over his past five starts, a stretch that has repeatedly kept a punchless lineup in games it had no business winning.
He credited Rice for staying locked in through his rough night.
“Really proud of Ben,” Weathers said. “Obviously the ninth inning didn’t go how he wanted it to, but staying within the game and putting a big swing on the board for us, that’s huge for him, I think it’s huge for the team.”
Cease was every bit as sharp. He struck out 10 over 6 1/3 innings and allowed just two hits, reaching 201 strikeouts to lead the American League and notching his sixth straight season with 200 or more. Yet he left trailing, undone by the Yankees’ knack for scratching out runs without much contact.
Boone’s lineup tweaks manufacture the margin
With Cease looming and the Yankees having scored twice over the previous three games, Boone shook up his order. He moved Rice to leadoff, hit García second, and started José Caballero at second base over the slumping Jazz Chisholm Jr.
The Caballero move paid off twice. In the third, he drew a walk, stole third and scored the game’s first run on García’s sacrifice fly. In the seventh, his two-out single scored George Lombard Jr., whose double had just chased Cease from the game.
Boone praised the utilityman’s fingerprints on the win.
“A lot of really good things by him,” Boone said, “and a big difference in the game today.”
The Yankees finished with six hits, three of them for extra bases, and turned them into just enough offense. Tim Hill worked the 10th for his second save, allowing Toronto’s automatic runner to score on an Andrés Giménez single before closing it out. New York now heads to Baltimore for a three-game set beginning Tuesday, still leaning on its pitching and still searching for steadier bats.
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