Luis Gil was terrific for the Yankees down the stretch. 

The right-hander threw well enough that he earned himself the ALDS Game 1 start. 

Things, however, did not quite go as planned on Saturday afternoon.

Gil was knocked out of the game by the high-powered Blue Jays over just 2.2 innings of work, allowing two runs on four hits (two homers) in what was his shortest outing of the season. 

He gave up a two-out solo shot to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the bottom of the first, and then Alejandro Kirk made him pay for another mistake with a no-doubt solo blast of his own leading off the second. 

The righty came back out for the bottom of the third, but was pulled after giving up a two-out single to Guerrero. 

“They were hunting the top of the zone and put some good swings on him,” Aaron Boone said. “You live with the two solo shots, we were still in the game there and he did enough, we felt like we could piece it together from there.”

As things played out, though, the Yanks were unable to piece this one together. 

The offense wasted a golden opportunity with Toronto’s Kevin Gausman on the ropes in the sixth, as Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton struck out with the bases loaded in a close ballgame.

The Jays' offense was sure to make them pay for that an inning later, as they jumped all over the struggling Luke Weaver to score four more times in the seventh, officially putting this one away and securing the series advantage. 

“Not the result we wanted,” Gil said through an interpreter. “You want to execute your pitches against this lineup, but at the same time they’re big-league hitters, they’re there to swing the bat and they were able to do that tonight -- but I have full confidence in my teammates and I know we’re going to come back strong tomorrow.”

A game lost but another valuable experience for Sánchez originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The stroll to the outfield for his pregame warmups couldn’t have been any cooler for Phillies starting pitcher Cristopher Sánchez. And neither could his reaction.

Sánchez, about to make his third playoff start in the first game of the NLDS against the defending World Series champion Dodgers, took his cap off and raised his long right arm to the frenzied, early-arriving crowd who were showering him with adulation.

Turns out, the red-clad fans were just practicing their cheering before Sánchez’ acknowledgment, because then it became deafening.

The sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park was never silent during a heartbreaking 5-3 loss to the Dodgers, who took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series with Game 2 scheduled for Monday night. Sánchez kept the powerful Dodgers silent for most of his outing, as he allowed just four hits and two earned runs during his 5 2/3 innings.

But that wasn’t good enough, as Los Angeles took the lead for good the next inning when Teoscar Hernandez bombed a three-run, two-out homer off reliever Matt Strahm to lead the Dodgers to the win.

While Sánchez stated his outing wasn’t good enough for the win, his performance will go a long way into his march as a top starter in this league, because he knows how to make that happen.

“We lost tonight so personally I don’t care about how I did individually,” he said after striking out eight. “If we lose then I don’t feel good. One pitch changed the game for us and for me personally.

“Individually, even if I perform well, or whatever I do, if we lose the game then I don’t feel good. We’re a team. If we win then we win together and if we lose then we all lose together. I don’t feel good about losing.”

And that’s where he is, personally and professionally, in a nutshell. He has grown as much mentally as he has in height the past few years, in which he sprouted to six feet, six inches tall. His pitching can be documented by stats. His growth as a leader and top pitcher in the league is seen a bit differently. Like Saturday night.

“He was, again, really good,” said Rob Thomson. “The strike throwing ability. The changeup was filthy tonight. 65 percent strikes, 18 whiffs, 17 out of 24, I think, first pitch (strikes). He was fantastic. He really was.”

You could really bottle those quotes from the manager and insert them after almost all of Sánchez’ starts this season. He’s become that good. Good enough that the national media, who don’t see him that often, were overly impressed throughout the park.

It was just the third playoff start for the 28-year-old and the first since being anointed the team’s ace after Zack Wheeler was shelved by a blood clot near his right shoulder that ultimately required surgery.

Sánchez has embraced the new role with the passion of a veteran, but with the understanding that you never stop absorbing the lessons in this crazy game of baseball.

“To learn and to always learn,” Sánchez said of what he could take from last night’s devastating loss. “There’s always new things that you can learn from everything that you get. Learn from those things on this outcome and I think there’s a lot of things that we have to improve but take the good out of it and learn from it.”

As much as a crowd like Saturday’s can give adrenaline to a player, the withdrawal can also be real. Perhaps a little of that hit Sánchez during his outing.

“Yeah, he looked great,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto. “I thought it looked like he got a little tired there that last inning. He started falling behind hitters, wasn’t quite commanding his fastball the same as he was early on. But other than that inning he looked his old self. He was great.

“It’s not that he was at a ton of pitches but there’s a ton of energy out there. These games are draining. I looked up one point in the fourth inning, and I was exhausted. I couldn’t believe it was only the fourth inning. I can’t imagine what a starting pitcher feels like. That’s just part of the playoffs and for me, I think just the command of his pitches was a little off there in that last inning.”

He left the game with two outs in the sixth, having given up those two runs. His demeanor was much different than it had been earlier in the night when he went to the outfield for that warmup session. His shoulders were slightly shrugged, the frustration readable on his face. But as he spoke to the media following the game, Sánchez was thoughtful about what had happened, honest with his performance and professing his belief of team first.

In the short term, it is a hard loss for this team in a playoff series against perhaps the best team in baseball right now. In the long term, an experience gained by their top pitcher.

Red October coverage on NBC Sports Philadelphia is sponsored by Toyota.

Aaron Judge missed on a big chance, two Yankee bullpen cogs wobbled and Alejandro Kirk homered twice Saturday as the Blue Jays routed the Yankees, 10-1, in the opener of their ALDS at Rogers Centre in Toronto.

Toronto also got a much better outing from their starter, Kevin Gausman, than the Yankees did from Luis Gil,who was yanked after only 2.2 innings. The Jays scored four runs in both the seventh and eighth innings to wreck a tight game.

The Yanks will try to even up the series Sunday in Game 2. They were the second-best road team in MLB this year, but that has not translated to Toronto. They are now 1-7 at Rogers Centre this year.

Toronto’s Game 1 victory was the Jays’ first postseason win since Game 4 of the 2016 AL Championship Series. Toronto had been mired in a seven-game playoff losing streak. 

Here are the takeaways...

- The baseball world has been waiting for Judge, who took a .212 postseason average into Saturday, to have a breakout October and he had a key opportunity in the sixth inning of Game 1 with the Yanks down, 2-0. The inning started when Anthony Volpe swatted a ball off the left-field wall for a leadoff double. Austin Wells followed with a single and Trent Grisham walked, loading the bases and bringing up Judge, who entered the game with a career average of .354 against Gausman and six home runs. After a tense, eight-pitch battle, Judge struck out, swinging and missing at a Gausman splitter that dove out of the strike zone. Gausman set up the outside pitch by throwing a 97-mph fastball inside to Judge, who fouled it off. The Yankees scored when Gausman threw four straight balls to Cody Bellinger, but they could not tack on. Gausman retired Ben Rice on a popup for the second out and then Toronto manager John Schneider replaced Gausman with righty Louis Varland. With Giancarlo Stanton up and a 1-2 count, Varland threw a 101-mph fastball past Stanton’s hard cut for the final out of the inning.

- Judge has been hitting so far this postseason -- he was 2-for-4 in Game 1 with a single and a double and is batting .400 this October with a .905 OPS.

- Except for the bases-loaded walk, Gausman was excellent for Toronto, getting quick outs and using his mid-80s splitter to generate whiffs. The Yankees swung at the pitch 17 times and missed 10 of them, according to Baseball Savant. Overall, Gausman allowed one run and four hits in 5.2 innings, striking out three and walking two. He had only 50 pitches after five scoreless innings, but the Yankees made him work in the sixth inning and though he got Judge in a big spot, the Jays went to the bullpen for the final out of that frame.

- Yankee starters were mostly excellent in the first round victory over Boston, fashioning a 1.33 ERA and delivering 20.1 innings in three games. But that ended quickly in the ALDS. Gil lasted only 2.2 innings and gave up two runs and four hits. He struck out two and walked none. He gave up two early home runs and the Jays looked pretty comfortable against him. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. homered in the first inning and Kirk slammed a 392-foot homer in the second. Gil is generally adept at suppressing home runs – he allowed 0.8 per nine innings this season and his career mark is around one per nine.

- Guerrero’s homer was a solo shot and his first longball since Sept. 5, a span of 90 plate appearances. It was also Guerrero’s first career playoff homer and perhaps a start at altering the October perception of him – he came into the game with a career average of .136 and a .422 OPS in his first six career postseason games, all losses. Guerrero also made a terrific defensive play at first in the second inning, a diving, backhand snare of a Ryan McMahon liner that he took to the first-base bag for an unassisted double play. He finished the day 3-for-4 with two RBI.

- Luke Weaver’s woes this postseason continued when he came in to start the seventh, an inning that devolved into a four-run bonanza for Toronto. Weaver walked Daulton Varsho leading off and then gave up a single to Anthony Santander. The lone glimmer of that particular play came when Judge threw the ball all the way to third, perhaps lessening some of the concerns about his injured elbow. But with first and third against Weaver, Andrés Giménez singled through a drawn-in infield to drive in an insurance run and put Toronto up, 3-1. Weaver has faced six batters so far in the playoffs and all of them have reached base. He was removed in favor of Fernando Cruz. But, one out later, Cruz allowed a two-run double to Nathan Lukes and a sac fly to Guerrero, ballooning Toronto’s lead to 6-1. According to the Fox broadcast, the Jays were 71-4 when scoring five-plus runs, the best such mark in MLB.

- Kirk hit his second homer of the game, leading off the eighth inning, connecting against Paul Blackburn. Including his homer flurry at the end of the regular season, Kirk has five home runs in his last three games.

- Perhaps the Yankees could’ve kick-started their offense early against Gausman, but they came out on the wrong side of a quirky play. Grisham seemed to foul a ball off his toe leading off, but umpires did not see it, and Yankee arguments did not sway them. The ball went to Guerrero for a 3-unassisted, giving Gausman an easy, first-pitch out.

Game MVP: Alejandro Kirk

Kirk, who became the fourth player in Blue Jays history to have a multi-homer game in the playoffs.

Highlights

Cody Bellinger walks in the first Yankees run! pic.twitter.com/BM5B3cOz1c

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) October 4, 2025

What's next

The Yankees and Blue Jays continue their best-of-five series on Sunday. First pitch is set for 4:08 p.m.

New York will send ace Max Fried to the mound with Toronto countering with Trey Yesavage.