Two showdowns against the Blue Jays stand between Gerrit Cole and his first Cy Young award.

The Yankees ace will take the ball Thursday night for what is likely to be his penultimate start — though the Yankees could get him an extra one if they wanted to in the season finale — as he tries to put the finishing touches on an award-worthy season.

After making his last start of the season at Yankee Stadium against the Blue Jays on Thursday, Cole is lined up to face them again next week in Toronto.

In two starts against them this season, the right-hander has tossed 11 ²/₃ scoreless innings.

Heading into Thursday’s outing, Cole was the clear front-runner to take home the AL Cy Young, though Twins right-hander Sonny Gray, Mariners right-hander Luis Castillo and Blue Jays right-hander Kevin Gausman (who faced the Yankees on Wednesday night) were all looming as potential threats.

“I know he’s probably in a good spot,” manager Aaron Boone said Wednesday. “I haven’t really dug in that much lately to see what everyone else is doing and where it all lines up. I know he’s had an awesome year.

“But to me, he’s a Cy Young.”

Entering Thursday, Cole led the American League with a 2.81 ERA while throwing an AL-high 192 innings. His ERA-plus of 155 — which adjusts for ballpark factors and opponents, with 100 being league average — also led the AL, while his strikeout rate of 27.2 percent was fourth and his walk rate of 6.3 percent was seventh.

And after having the second-highest home run rate of any qualified starter in the majors last season (4.2 percent), he had the fifth-lowest rate this season at 2.6 percent.

All of that had Cole with the highest WAR (by Baseball Reference) of any pitcher in the majors as of Wednesday at 6.4, while FanGraphs — which utilizes Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) in its calculations — had him tied for third in the AL at 4.4.

“Obviously feel like he should finish strong here to cement that [Cy Young] case,” pitching coach Matt Blake said. “But there’s a lot of competition this year — Castillo, Gray, Gausman all putting together really nice years. Anything can happen down the stretch. You’d like to see him go wire-to-wire with a strong season and finish strong against division rivals, hopefully that’s the case.”

Gray, the former Yankee, was right behind Cole with a 2.84 ERA across 174 innings to go with a 152 ERA-plus, a 23.9 percent strikeout rate and 7.6 percent walk rate.

Castillo had a 3.06 ERA across 188 ¹/₃ innings, a 134 ERA-plus, a 27.3 percent strikeout rate and a 6.6 percent walk rate.

Mariners manager Scott Servais went to bat for him last week, saying that Castillo didn’t get enough credit.

“Certainly, we don’t play in New York. We play in Seattle,” Servais told reporters. “East Coast tends to get a little bit more exposure.”

One of the biggest factors working in Cole’s favor, besides the AL’s lowest ERA, was his heavy workload.

The pitcher who prides himself on durability is set to eclipse the 200-inning mark for the sixth time in his career, providing a source of consistency throughout the season.

“I think that’s huge for this team in general, but any team, really,” Blake said. “The guy that you want having the ball takes the ball the most amount, gives you the most amount of innings, is very consistent. Every five days, you know you’re going to get a quality effort out of him. He’s competing for you to the best of his ability and he’s going to stay out there as long as he can.”