The Yankees punished Kevin Gausman with patience.
Oswaldo Cabrera drew a walk. So did Ben Rice.
And so did Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe.
All of those came against Gausman during a six-run rally in the third inning of the Yankees’ 11-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, kicking off Sunday’s doubleheader in the Bronx.
“Just a number of really, really good, disciplined at-bats,” manager Aaron Boone said. “If you start chasing Gausman at all with the split and stuff, he’s too good. You’ve got to be disciplined, and that inning was phenomenal.”
Toronto led, 1-0, when Cabrera and Rice began the free-pass frenzy with back-to-back one-out walks.
Aaron Judge followed with a booming line drive to the right-field wall to load the bases, and Cody Bellinger capped an eight-pitch at-bat with a sacrifice fly to tie the score, 1-1.
And then Gausman unraveled.
He walked Goldschmidt on six pitches to reload the bases. He walked Chisholm on four pitches to force in a run, giving the Yankees a 2-1 lead. And he walked Volpe after a nine-pitch battle to push another run across.
Austin Wells then broke the game open with a three-run double on Gausman’s 53rd pitch of the inning — and the ninth of that at-bat — to put the Yankees up, 6-1.
“I felt like he was definitely at the end of his pitch count for that inning and he had to be aggressive to me, so I was being pretty aggressive back to him,” said Wells, who fouled off four two-strike pitches before lining a 3-2 fastball off the wall in right-center.
Guasman was lifted from there. He punctuated his disastrous day by shouting at home-plate umpire Chris Conroy from the Blue Jays dugout and was promptly ejected from the game.
The Yankees needed only two hits in that inning to tag Gausman for six runs. Gausman, who totaled six walks through his first five starts, elicited only five swings and misses, while the Yankees fouled off 15 of his 71 pitches.
“It’s just the momentum and the confidence,” Wells said. “Guys are taking close pitches, taking really good swings. Whether they’re just missing or not, it still gives you confidence.”
Blue Jays right-hander Paxton Schultz walked the first batter Jasson Domínguez — the first batter he faced after relieving Gausman — for the Yankees’ sixth walk of the inning.
Volpe added to the Yankees’ scoring in the fifth, when he struck an opposite-field solo shot against Schultz for his fifth home run of the season.
The homer — Volpe’s first since April 2 — came on a high fastball, a pitch that had given the shortstop trouble in recent series against the Tampa Bay Rays and Cleveland Guardians.
That was more than enough support for Yankees ace Max Fried, who held Toronto to one run on six hits in six innings to win his fifth consecutive start.
Pitching for the first time in a week, Fried shook off some early command issues — leading to four hits, two walks and a run through two innings — to retire the final nine batters he faced.
“You’re not going to feel your best every time that you take the ball,” Fried said. “The most important thing for me is to be able to give us a chance to win. Keeping it close, knowing that these guys are grinding and that they’re a really good lineup, and at any time, they can put up five or six runs in an inning.”
Blue Jays manager John Schneider was ejected in the top of the fifth when he engaged in an animated argument with Conroy following a called strike on a 1-0 changeup to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
That at-bat ended with Fried striking out Guerrero.
Fried is now 5-0 in six starts with the Yankees, who signed him to an eight-year, $218 million contract in the offseason. His ERA rose ever so slightly on Sunday from 1.42 to 1.43.
The Yankees dropped Friday’s series opener, 4-2, after Devin Williams blew a save and fell to 0-2 in his first season in New York. Before Sunday’s first game, Boone said he was removing Williams from the closer role as the right-hander works through his struggles.
Saturday’s game was rained out, prompting Sunday’s single-admission doubleheader.
The second game began at 5:25 p.m, with Clarke Schmidt (0-1, 7.45 ERA) getting the start for the Yankees and Chris Bassitt (2-1, 1.88 ERA) on the mound for Toronto.
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