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.
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, but Cabrera made it only to third base on the long single because he briefly retreated to second to tag up.
With the bases loaded, 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 blew the game open with a three-run double on Gausman’s 53rd pitch of the inning — and the eighth of that at-bat — to put the Yankees up, 6-1.
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 had issued just six walks through his first five starts.
For good measure, Blue Jays reliever Paxton Schultz walked the first batter he faced, Jasson Domínguez, for the Yankees’ sixth walk of the inning.
Volpe added to the Yankees’ scoring in the fifth inning, 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 shakiness — four hits, two walks and a run through two innings — to retire the final nine batters he faced.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider was ejected in the fifth inning 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. On Sunday, manager Aaron 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 is scheduled to begin 30 minutes after the end of the first game, with Clarke Schmidt (0-1, 7.45 ERA) set to pitch for the Yankees and Chris Bassitt (2-1, 1.88 ERA) set to start for Toronto.
