Red-Hot Blue Jays Best Gerrit Cole, Extend Win Streak to 6 Games

Alejandro Kirk whacked two home runs as the Jays ran through Gerrit Cole on route to the club's sixth straight win.

The Toronto Blue Jays are on fire. 

Coming into this one, the offense had hit two or more home runs in four straight games, and Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk and Marcus Semien all have an OPS above .950 over the last two weeks.

The team's pitching, while perhaps not as flashy as the bats, has been equally astounding. Since August 18—following a loss to the lowly Nationals—the Blue Jays' pitching staff leads the AL with 4.0 WAR, a 3.11 FIP, and ranks second with a 3.29 ERA. 

Finally, everything is working. But in Game Two of a four-game series that carries serious playoff implications, the Blue Jays faced their toughest test yet.

Cloaked in Yankee pinstripes, flamethrowing right-hander Gerrit Cole waited on the mound. Since moving past his foreign substance woes in June, then overcoming COVID-19 in August, Cole has bullied his way back to a deserved spot as the AL Cy Young favorite. This evening, he stood between the Blue Jays and six wins in a row.

This was a heat-check game of sorts. If Toronto beats up the league's best, they send a message to every other team in the wild-card chase. Fail to plate runs against him, and it's an untimely step backwards.

In Tuesday's 5-1 win, the Blue Jays just kept on chugging. The first blow came in the second inning, when Kirk ripped a line drive into the right field bleachers. 

The 22-year-old rounded the bases as a shower of boos echoed through Yankee stadium. Guerrero Jr. danced with the home run jacket before placing the oversized coat on the undersized Kirk. 

Kirk, seems to continually exceed expectations, despite doing nothing but kill baseballs the way he did when he turned around a 99-mph Cole fastball at the top of the zone and rocketed it the other way for a solo shot. For him, success in big moments like these boils down to a simple approach at the plate. 

"Like I always do, I'm in trying to stay back, [keep] my hands back and look for a pitch that I want," Kirk said through an interpreter. "I saw it was a little bit up and put good contact on it.

"That's what I been trying to do—stay calm in every big at-bat, relax, trust in myself, trust in my hands. And of course I've been working on this with [hitting coach] Guillermo [Martinez] in the cage on and it's been helping me a lot. So thankfully I'm able to help the team."

Home runs launched Toronto to victory lately, but Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo lauded his team's whole-field approach as an under-the-radar key to success

"When we're hot, we're hitting balls out," Montoyo said. "But then all of a sudden, we're hitting the ball everywhere. Vladdy now is getting base-hits to right field instead of hitting bombs.

"The whole offense is having good at bats. And when you're having good at bats, you put more pressure on the whoever we're facing on the mound. So that's what we're doing lately."

The Jays plated two runs on sacrifice flies in a wonky fourth inning that saw Cole balk a runner over and throw a wild pitch. Eventually the Yankees' hurler motioned for the trainer, ending his night after 3 1/3 innings, three runs allowed and 70 pitches thrown. 

Whether it was Toronto's excellent approach at the plate, or the left hamstring tightness that forced the right-gander from the game, the Blue Jays made Cole sweat, averaging a 95-mph average exit velocity on the evening. Once he left the game, the offense kept going.

After Semien hit his 38th homer of the season in the fifth, Kirk put the jacket on for a second time with another solo shot in the eighth that also found its way to the right field stands.

An early lead was all Blue Jays starter Steven Matz needed, as he pitched six innings, allowing only one earned run on seven hits, while striking out six.

"I'm always a big feel pitcher," Matz said. "It's a hard thing to describe, but you just start getting a feel for all your pitches, make in-game adjustments, that type of thing. 

"When I have good feel out there, and in between my starts, I feel like I can really keep building off each start and each pitch."

Matz has been sneaky good this past little while. The left-hander's 1.30 ERA in August was the lowest among all pitchers with at least 25 innings thrown, and he carried that momentum through to this game.

Toronto's win streak moves to six games—the longest of the season—and the club sits a mere two games back of the second wild-card spot. After nights like these, things just feel different.

"It's exciting," Matz said. "Coming in here in New York, we knew this was a big series, we got a little extra adrenaline coming in.

"We're having fun, we're playing good, you can kind of sense it. We're playing important baseball in September, and that's what you want to do."