NEW YORK — The New York Yankees wound up with an AL wild-card spot Saturday, beating Toronto 2-1 on Aaron Judge’s 52nd home run shortly before Boston clinched the AL East crown.
New York needed two wins and two losses by Boston to force a tiebreaker Monday at Yankee Stadium. Instead, the Yankees will host Minnesota in the wild-card game Tuesday.
The wild-card winner will face Cleveland in the best-of-five AL Division Series. Boston, which beat Houston about 20 minutes after the Yankees won, is set to take on the Astros in the playoffs.
Replacement starter CC Sabathia (14-5) won his fifth straight decision. With the Yankees still in contention for the division title to begin the day, manager Joe Girardi opted for Sabathia to pitch on his regular four days’ rest in place of the originally scheduled Jaime Garcia.
