Yankees scratch Juan Soto with 'right hand bruise' before losing big to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (six RBIs) and Blue Jays

TORONTO — A day after the Yankees' slumping offense erupted for 16 runs and 18 hits, the player who sparked the outburst was a last-minute scratch.

It showed.

Juan Soto, initially in Saturday afternoon’s lineup in rightfield and batting second, was scratched about 25 minutes before first pitch against the Blue Jays because of a “right hand bruise” suffered the night before while “sliding into home plate” in the fourth inning, the club announced.

That news took priority over what happened on the field, none of which was pretty, as the Yankees got flattened, 9-3, in front of 37,448 at Roger Centre for their eighth loss in 10 games.

Soto, whose three-run homer in the sixth inning Friday night turned a 3-1 deficit into a 4-3 lead in what would be a 16-5 victory, underwent imaging on his right hand Saturday afternoon that Aaron Boone said came back negative.

“[It's] concerning when I know he’s got some swelling in there and then swinging [pregame] didn’t go real well,” Boone said after the game. “Hopefully it’s just that. It’s banging the hand and having some inflammation in there, and hopefully we can get that out of there and it’s not too big of a thing, but we’ll see.”

Boone left open the possibility that Soto will play Sunday, but with the Yankees off Monday and the chance that the team will have him undergo additional evaluation in New York, that seems unlikely.

The Yankees were held to one run Saturday before  Austin Wells hit a two-run homer in the ninth to make it 9-3.

The Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drove in six runs with a two-run homer off Nestor Cortes, a three-run double off Caleb Ferguson on an 0-and-2 pitch with two outs in a five-run sixth  and an RBI single off Clay Holmes with two outs in the eighth. Former Yankee Isiah Kiner-Falefa had four hits.

Guerrero, who started the season slowly but who has routinely tortured Yankees pitching since his debut in 2019, is  7-for-15 with three homers and 10 RBIs in the first three games of this series. He is 14-for-29 with five homers, five doubles and 19 RBIs in his last six games.

“He’s on a tear,” Wells said. “He’s covering both sides of the plate, so when you’re game-planning for one of the better hitters in the league, you just kind of hope to find spots where he’s not looking. He’s done a good job of putting some good swings on some really good pitches this weekend, so props to him.”

There were props, too, for Blue Jays righthander Chris Bassitt (7-6, 3.24 ERA). He was nailed in the right forearm by  Aaron Judge's 101.6-mph line drive on an infield single in the first inning, and although clearly in pain, he stayed in the game, pitching the rest of his six innings with a huge welt on his pitching arm. Wearing long black sleeves after the first inning, he allowed  one run, six hits and two walks. Bassitt improved to 3-0 with a 0.82 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP in five career starts against the Yankees.

“He deserved it,” Nestor Cortes said of Bassitt picking up the win. "You could see it from the dugout, the bump that he had on his forearm. [Gutsy] by him going out there and competing the way he did.”

Cortes was not as complimentary toward himself. The lefthander entered the afternoon with remarkable home-road splits this season — 4-3 with a 1.84 ERA in nine home starts vs. 0-3, 5.57 in eight road games — and pitched to that discrepancy Saturday, at least in the first inning.

After Cortes struck out leadoff man Bo Bichette with a cutter, Kiner-Falefa — who has  gone 7-for-11 in this series and 15-for-31 in his last eight games — singled to left, extending his hitting streak to 13 games. Guerrero destroyed a 2-and-2 changeup to right-center for his 13th homer, making it 2-0 and giving him his sixth straight game with multiple RBIs.

It was the 10th straight game in which the Yankees' opponent scored first and the eighth time in those 10 games in which the Yankees allowed at least one first-inning run.

“Didn’t have my best stuff today and I felt like I could have done a better job of putting more intensity into it and having more of a sense of urgency,” said Cortes, who allowed three runs and seven hits in 4 1/3 innings in falling to 4-7, 3.51. “Everything feels good. Just one of those games of the 32 [starts], you’ve got to grind through them. Not always we’re going to have our best stuff. It’s easy when we have our best stuff. These are the starts that you have to get through them and control damage as much as possible.”

Notes & quotes: The Blue Jays, who intentionally walked Judge  with a runner on second and two outs in the third, for some reason chose to pitch to him with a runner at third and two outs in the fifth and slumping Alex Verdugo on deck — and paid for the decision as Judge hit a ground smash back up the middle. The RBI single made it 3-1 and gave him his MLB-leading 80th RBI in his 83rd game.