Yankees confident coming home will change their ALDS fortune

The Yankees need coming home to matter, or else they are actually going home. 

After leaving the building that has doubled as their personal hell this season at a 2-0 deficit in the best-of-five ALDS, the Yankees returned home Monday for an off-day, trying to shake off a pair of embarrassing blowouts to extend their season past Tuesday’s Game 3. 

“We’re going home, they’re coming to our place and it’s going to be different,” Will Warren said Sunday night in Toronto before the Yankees flew home. “We’re a good team. We know what we have to do — handle business at home.” 

The Yankees insist they have been preparing for this moment all season.

They went through plenty of bad times during the summer and came out on the other side of it, though they had some more margin for error then than they do now.

They had to win every game down the stretch to have a shot at the AL East, which they nearly did by winning their final eight regular-season games — albeit against the Orioles and White Sox — only for the Blue Jays to still claim the division. 

And then they faced a 1-0 deficit in their best-of-three wild-card series last week before coming back to beat the Red Sox. 

But doing it against the Blue Jays will be a different kind of challenge, coming off being handled by a combined score of 23-8 in Games 1 and 2, the latter coming with their ace on the mound Sunday. Whether or not the two lashings have any lingering effect on Game 3 remains to be seen. 

“We’re human. You feel things,” manager Aaron Boone said Monday. “It sucks when you lose. It’s exciting when you win. And you try and absorb that, but you’ve got to keep moving. That’s what the regular season is. That’s what 162 is, and that’s certainly what the playoffs is when it gets ramped up and the reaction can be after every game so exciting or so deflating. 

“You’ve got a job to do. And that next play, that next pitch, that next game becomes the most important thing, and that’s where you’ve got to keep your focus.” 

The Yankees were 1-6 against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre during the regular season, which was only perpetuated in Games 1 and 2.

But they were 4-2 against the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, which they need to tap into beginning Tuesday. 

“I think just being at home gives us a little bit of confidence,” Cody Bellinger said Monday. “Obviously they got us in those two games there in Toronto. But to be back at Yankee Stadium in front of the home crowd, it’s definitely exciting. That was my first postseason experience in the wild-card [series], and it was just a really fun environment. So looking forward to it tomorrow.” 

Aaron Judge mentioned the Yankees needing to jump on top first, instead of falling behind early as they did in each of the first two games.

Those early deficits got Rogers Centre rocking and the Blue Jays playing downhill with all the momentum. 

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Carlos Rodón will be tasked with trying to hold a pesky Blue Jays lineup off the board, but even then, the Yankees will need to cash in against Shane Bieber more than they did against Kevin Gausman and Trey Yesavage, who had their way with their splitters, giving a lefty-heavy lineup plenty of trouble. 

In the history of the division series, teams that have taken a 2-0 lead at home have gone on to win 31 of 34 times.

One of the exceptions was the 2017 Yankees, who lost Games 1 and 2 in Cleveland before winning three straight.

Judge is the only active player left from that team, but he was already beginning to tap into that experience Sunday night. 

“We got to take it to them when we get back to New York,” Judge said. “We have to be able to score first and put the pressure on them to flip the script.”