TORONTO — The downtime from a bye during the wild-card round served the Toronto Blue Jays well during their American League Division Series against the New York Yankees, allowing them to balance varying needs of players ahead of the four-game victory.

“We know it can be an advantage or disadvantage,” Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro said on the field at Yankee Stadium during Wednesday’s clinch celebration. “The way that we creatively set the time up to balance recovery and some much-needed rest for some key guys, along with ramping back up and remaining competitive in those two intrasquad games was just about perfect. It played a big role in allowing some guys to get healthy who had some nagging injuries and our ‘pen that was gassed down the stretch to get some rest that was neede

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