TORONTO — The latest stop on the Yankees’ tour of the gauntlet that is the AL East brought them north of the border to face a pitcher who has mostly dominated them while trying a pitching experiment of their own. 

Sure enough, it worked to near perfection. 

Alek Manoah did not look like the Alek Manoah of old and the Yankees took advantage, kicking off a four-game series against the Blue Jays with a 7-4 win on Monday night at Rogers Centre. 

The Yankees (24-19) also got strong pitching performances from opener Jimmy Cordero and bulk reliever Jhony Brito, who combined for seven shutout innings before the Blue Jays (24-17) finally got to Brito and Ian Hamilton in the eighth. 

Add in a two-homer game from Aaron Judge — including a 462-foot moonshot, a few pitches after Aaron Boone was ejected for arguing a low strike against him — and all in all, it was an encouraging night for the Yankees as they continued a grueling stretch of playing 11 of 14 games against the Rays and Blue Jays. In the process, they won for the ninth time in their last 13 games. 

“This is when we need to step up, especially against two of the best teams in the AL East,” said Judge, who also caught some attention for his glances towards the Yankees’ dugout before his mammoth home run — which he said was directed at his teammates who were still chirping at the umpire. 

“This is when you gotta show up,” Judge said. “We split a series against Tampa and now getting this first one against the Blue Jays is big-time.” 

Judge’s home runs opened and closed the scoring for the Yankees, who have come alive offensively of late. Monday marked the eighth time in their last nine games that they have scored six runs or more. 

“Everyone’s chipping in,” Boone said. “Obviously getting some guys back has been huge, but games where we’ve had results and games where we haven’t, I’ve liked where we are from a preparedness, energy and focus [standpoint]. We’re hooked up on the bench and that’s been good to see.” 

The Yankees pushed across five runs off Manoah, who struggled with his command and issued a career-high seven walks, before knocking him out of the game after four-plus innings. 

Coming into Monday, Manoah had posted a 1.93 ERA across seven starts and 42 innings against the Yankees while giving up just two home runs and 14 walks.

That included seven shutout, two-hit innings last month at Yankee Stadium. 

The Yankees matched those two home runs in the first inning Monday, with Judge drilling a solo shot and Willie Calhoun adding a two-run homer for the early 3-0 lead. 

Before Manoah was booed off the mound in the fifth inning, the Yankees tacked on two more runs off him in the fourth on an RBI single from Kyle Higashioka and a bases-loaded walk from Judge. 

The Yankees made it 6-0 in the sixth inning when Anthony Rizzo stayed red-hot with an RBI double, extending his on-base streak to 14 games. 

That provided plenty of breathing room for Cordero and Brito. Cordero retired all six batters he faced to start the game, with the Yankees wanting him for the right-handed heavy top of the Blue Jays’ lineup, before giving way to Brito in the third inning. 

Brito delivered five quick, scoreless innings before running into trouble in a four-run eighth that was extended in part because of a Gleyber Torres error. 

Hamilton could not get out of the mess but then Michael King came on and did the job, tossing the final 1 ¹/₃ innings to record the save. 

“[The pitching] was big-time,” Judge said. “Especially Jimmy going through the top of that lineup — that’s one of the best in the league right there, that one through five, one through six they got. Him throwing up a couple zeroes for us and letting the offense work a little bit gave us a sigh of relief.”