TORONTO — The Yankees might just be the only Americans welcome in Canada.
They may never want to come back here again, but if they do, the entire country will greet them with open arms, given how generous they are in giving away free outs.
With a chance to claim the series against the team they are looking up at in the AL East, the Yankees put together one last slopfest of a loss in the Rogers Centre, which has become a house of horrors for them over the past three weeks.
They tried to hit enough home runs to wipe away the stench, but three straight innings with at least one error were too much to overcome as the Yankees fell to the Blue Jays 8-4 in front of another sellout crowd of 42,143 that delighted in all their miscues.
The final tally was four errors, enough to sink the Yankees (56-46) yet again as their defense kicked the ball around for most of the game and allowed the Blue Jays (60-42) to end the night leading the division by four games.
“Just not good enough,” said manager Aaron Boone, who along with pitching coach Matt Blake was ejected in the seventh inning for arguing balls and strikes. “We’ve got to obviously tighten it up. Confident we will. We’ll continue to work at it. We have good defenders here. But tonight was obviously a rough night for us.”
The brutal defensive performance came on the heels of the Yankees committing two errors (which led to a pair of runs) in Monday’s loss and survived another error (that led to two more runs) in Tuesday’s win.
Across their seven games here this season, the Yankees racked up a mind-numbing 11 errors (compared to 41 in their other 95 games).
Max Fried walks back to the mound after making a two-run throwing error in the fifth inning of the Yankees’ 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays on July 23, 2025.Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
That is how they ended up going 1-6 in those games against a Blue Jays team that excels at putting the ball in play and running hard to force the issue.
“We got a lot of things we got to clean up,” said Aaron Judge, who briefly tied the game 4-4 with a two-run homer in the sixth inning. “[Defense] is one of the things we got to clean up. Going into this off-day, we just got to refocus and tighten it up a little bit on defense. Pitchers are putting us in good spots to keep us in games so our offense can do its thing. We give any good team extra outs, it’s not going to go well for us.”
The Yankees have learned that lesson time and time again — including last October in the World Series, when their poor fundamentals were exposed by the Dodgers — and yet it continues to haunt them too often.
“I think it’s here and in this building we haven’t played well,” Boone said. “Overall we should be moving forward a good defensive club. We need to be.”
First baseman Ben Rice is unable to handle Jazz Chisholm’s throw allow Vladimir Guerrero (right) to advance to second base in the fifth inning of the Yankees’ loss to the Blue Jays.Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
Things began to unravel in the bottom of the fifth inning of a 2-2 game.
Max Fried, pitching for the first time in 11 days because of a blister on his left index finger, issued back-to-back one-out walks before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a chopper down the third base line.
Fried, who has fielded his position incredibly well this season, raced to field it, but then got off an awkward throw home that catcher J.C. Escarra could not handle.
Aaron Judge celebrates in the dugout with teammates after belting a two-run homer in the sixth inning of the Yankees’ loss to the Blue Jays
The ball trickled away and allowed both runs to score safely to put the Blue Jays up 4-2.
“Tough angle and just not a good throw,” said Fried, who walked three and gave up six runs (four earned) across 5 ¹/₃ innings. “It’s a tight ballgame there and to kind of let it go, that’s frustrating. For me, that can’t happen.”
Then with one out in the bottom of the sixth, Ernie Clement skied a fly ball to right field that the normally steady Cody Bellinger lost in the lights, turning it into a triple.
Myles Straw hits the go-ahead double in the sixth inning of the Blue Jays’ win over the Yankees.Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
Boone kept Fried — whose left pinky had begun to bleed because of a cut that he said was not blister-related — in the game for one more batter hoping to get a strikeout, but instead Myles Straw roped an RBI double for the 5-4 lead.
“Max makes a great pitch there and it’s got to be an out, really,” Bellinger said.
Two batters later, Ben Rice could not backhand a ground ball cleanly, allowing another run to score.
Then in the seventh, Guerrero led off with a single to left field that bounced past Jasson Domínguez’s sidesaddle attempt, the error allowing Guerrero to take second.
He then got to jog home as Bo Bichette clobbered a two-run homer off Scott Effross that made it an 8-4.
“Obviously we’ve had two crappy series up here, there’s no way around it,” Boone said. “Maybe we’ll get a chance to come back here at some point and flip that script.”
