NEW YORK — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stood on the infield grass at Yankee Stadium, looked up at the sky and started to cry. His Toronto Blue Jays had just advanced to the American League Championship Series with a precise deconstruction of the reigning AL champion New York Yankees, and Guerrero wanted to say a prayer of thanks — for the 5-2 victory in Game 4 of the division series Wednesday night and for the opportunity to deliver Toronto its first World Series berth in more than three decades.

“I got tears in my eyes,” Guerrero said, “and I couldn’t hold them.”

The Blue Jays, afterthoughts in the AL entering the season and even still to some as they romped to a division title, used eight pitchers in Game 4 — none who secured more than five outs — to stifle a Yankees lineup that led Major League Baseball in runs scored this season. With a dozen hits spread up and down the lineup, Toronto’s balanced offense dropped four runs on Yankees starter Cam Schlittler, who in his previous game had saved New York’s season with a no-run, 12-strikeout throttling of the Boston Red Sox in the wild-card series.

Toronto did not crumble so easily. The Blue Jays had tied the Yankees for the most wins in the AL East, going 94-68, and had received a first-round postseason bye because they beat New York in the season series. Doing the same in the division series necessitated the Blue Jays recovering from a gut-punch, 9-6 loss in Game 3, during which they had blown a 6-1 lead, their biggest squandered opportunity of the season.

“I texted the guys this morning and said, ‘This is an opportunity to have some fun,’ which I really meant,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “It seems uncomfortable as hell, but I really meant it. It’s easy to say, ‘OK, we blew the lead yesterday and we’re walking into this today,’ but I think that we really kind of felt it.”

All of Yankee Stadium felt it, too. The Blue Jays, who last reached the ALCS in 2016, had come here intent on closing the series after walloping Yankees pitchers for 23 runs in the first two games at home. While the offensive barrage relented slightly, the Blue Jays’ 34 runs over the first four games of the postseason are the fourth most ever for a team. Their individual numbers reflected it. Guerrero batted .529 with three home runs in the series and drove in the first run of Game 4. Ernie Clement, a veteran utility man, hit .643 and scored a pair of runs Wednesday.

The biggest hit came in the seventh inning, when the Blue Jays led 2-1. After a Jazz Chisholm Jr. error on what should have been a double-play ball, outfielder Nathan Lukes served a two-out single into center field to score Clement and Andres Gimenez. Toronto tacked on another run in the eighth to extend its advantage to 5-1, and Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman secured the final out to send home 47,823 fans who witnessed the Yankees fail to win a championship for the 16th consecutive year.

“They beat us this series, simple as that,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”

Toronto, meanwhile, could get its first crack since winning back-to-back titles in 1992 and 1993. The Blue Jays will host Game 1 of the ALCS on Sunday at Rogers Centre against the winner of the series-deciding Game 5 on Friday between the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners.

The Blue Jays will start Kevin Gausman, who had migrated to the bullpen in the middle of Game 4 just in case. He knew — all the Blue Jays knew — that to get through it without a starter eating up the bulk of the innings would be a test for Schneider and pitching coach Pete Walker.

Around 1 p.m., when they found out the Yankees’ expected lineup, Schneider, Walker, assistant pitching coach Sam Greene, bullpen coach Graham Johnson and pitching game plan coordinator Luke Hoey started to map out their deployment plan. They wanted opener Louis Varland — who the previous night had ceded a monumental and momentous Aaron Judge home run — to get through six batters. He did, at which point, with three left-handed hitters among the next four batters, Schneider called on lefty Mason Fluharty.

For nine innings, the Blue Jays engaged in games of cat and mouse with the Yankees, evermore seeking small edges. Fluharty allowed a solo home run to Ryan McMahon, only for the Blue Jays to answer with a go-ahead run in the fifth on a sacrifice fly by George Springer. In the meantime, Seranthony Dominguez and Eric Lauer each secured five outs without allowing a run, Yariel Rodriguez escaped with one out, Brendon Little danced around trouble to finish an inning, Braydon Fisher got a pair of outs, and Hoffman pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth and worked around traffic in the ninth to set off a celebration.

“John’s got some of the best feel in the game,” Lauer said. “I think him and Pete and all the guys that create everything that we do — the lineups, the pitching changes — are good baseball guys. They understand the flow of the game, pockets where guys need to be used, what situations are bigger and smaller. That’s all them. Having the trust to bring in every guy that they brought in and get the job done. When you have that, it’s an unquantifiable trait, but it’s very real.”

At times this season, the Blue Jays themselves have been difficult to quantify. They were no juggernaut. They played excellent defense, struck out less than any other team in MLB and pitched well enough. It was a good formula for the regular season. The question was how it would translate against a Yankees team with more pedigree and experience.

The answer was clear: just fine. And Guerrero set the tone for that. He comes from Canadian royalty, the son of Montreal Expos star and Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero. And when Guerrero Jr. signed a 14-year, $500 million contract extension in April — six months before he was scheduled to reach free agency — he was committing to a Blue Jays team that prior to this season had lost all six postseason games in which he played.

The tears were earned.

“It’s real for him,” Schneider said. “He’s at a different point in his career right now. It’s been part of what we’re doing.”

And what is that exactly?

“Growing up,” Schneider said, “and winning.”