TORONTO — Gerrit Cole walked into the visiting clubhouse at Rogers Centre on Wednesday afternoon and Aaron Judge immediately knew he was going to do something special.

The Yankees ace has “always got a look in his eye that he’s ready to go,” Judge said, “but today he had a different little chip on his shoulder.”

Even before he stepped on the mound Wednesday, Cole had likely already locked up the American League Cy Young award. But in case he needed a closing argument, he made a convincing one in his 33rd and final start of the season.

Cole tossed his second complete-game shutout of the season, a two-hit gem in a 6-0 win over the Blue Jays.

Facing the Blue Jays (87-71) for a second straight start as they try to nail down a playoff spot, Cole suffocated them. He lowered his ERA to 2.63 while finishing the season with 209 innings — both the best marks in the American League — to go with 222 strikeouts.

“He’s the best pitcher in the game,” said Judge, who crushed a pair of two-run home runs to provide plenty of support. “This is Gerrit Cole’s era, that’s for sure. He’s the benchmark for what an ace is supposed to be like on and off the field.”

Cole had already accomplished plenty in his first 10 years in the big leagues before this season, but missing from his résumé were a Cy Young award and a World Series. The Yankees (81-77) have not been good enough around Cole to chase a title this October, but he all but guaranteed himself the Cy Young on Wednesday night.

“I guess I’m just grateful for my teammates, because in the 33 games that I was able to play this year, they just showed up every single time,” Cole said after striking out five and walking none across 105 pitches. “I think lately, they kind of rallied around that [Cy Young chase] and maybe in a certain sense, after some of our collective hopes fell by the wayside, it motivated them to continue to play hard. I’m just so grateful for that.”

In the lead-up to his final start, Cole had tried to avoid talking too much about winning a Cy Young, insisting he did not want to get “distracted.” But after putting the finishing touches on his standout season, did he finally let it start to sink in?

“I’m on my second Labatt’s, so …” he said with a grin.

The Yankees signed Cole to a nine-year, $324 million contract for seasons like this — even if they didn’t plan on it not extending into October. While the size of that contract has come with lofty expectations, the 33-year-old right-hander has lived up to all of them throughout his fourth season with the team by taking his game to another level.

“For him to do it as a Yankee, with all the other great Yankees that have won Cy Youngs … he’s been a lifelong Yankee fan,” Judge said. “He’s looked up to Yankees. He wanted to wear pinstripes. He wanted to come to this city and perform. It’s all coming true.

“I know everybody in this clubhouse, it hurts that we’re not putting up a better season behind him to have somebody like this, pitching the way he is, pitching in the postseason, but we’ll get that figured out. We’ll get that taken care of for next year.”

Though he won’t get the chance to pitch in October this year, Cole treated his final two starts — both against the Blue Jays — as if they were Games 1 and 5 of a postseason series.

“I had a little bit of fun with that to bring some energy,” Cole said. “I was certainly aware that they were going to come at us tonight, needing to win. If that created a little different look in my eye, then maybe I should do that a little more often.”

There is a cruel irony for the Yankees in the fact that Cole had to manufacture a playoff scenario instead of actually pitching in a real one. Until his next opportunity to make a postseason start, though, he ensured that the Yankees would not have their first losing season since 1992.

“That’s just a clinic in pitching,” manager Aaron Boone said. “I think it embodied his season right there.”

Cole has twice finished second in Cy Young voting. By November, thanks in part to a dominant September (1.03 ERA in five starts), he will have his first and become the sixth Yankee to win the award.

“That was the cherry on top,” Judge said, “to an incredible season out of him.”