Sickening

By the time you read this, maybe, just maybe, my blood pressure will have calmed down and the smoke billowing from my head will have dissipated. Then again, maybe not. That was a great game Thursday night, an all-time classic to be sure, and that was also the most despicable, sickening, gut-wrenching loss of the season given what’s at stake. Lets get to it.

Oct. 17: Guardians 7, Yankees 5 (10)

Trying to wrap my head around what happened in Game 3 of the ALCS, and then having to sit down and bang this shit out, is pretty much the most difficult thing I’ve had to do since I started writing this newsletter a couple years ago.

This is never a problem for me when the Bills lose in some of the unbelievable ways they have lost during my 40-year career covering them because that’s my job and I’m emotionally detached from it. They can piss away a playoff game in 13 seconds, or lose on a Hail Mary, or any other number of stupid ways which many of you are well aware of, and my job calls for me to put my head down and write it, so that’s what I do.

But with the Yankees it’s different because you all know that I’m not a sports writer when it comes to the Yankees, I’m a fan just like all of you. And I’ll be honest, I couldn’t even sit down to start writing this for at least an hour after that incredible game was over. I was literally embedded in the couch, unable to move, smoke billowing from my ears and screaming expletives at the TV as my blood pressure soared into a dangerous space. Call me crazy, and I’ll agree with you because I am.

The range of emotions we all experienced Thursday night were unparalleled, and to have gone through all of that would have been so gratifyingly exhilarating had the Yankees won and been sitting here up three games to none in the ALCS. But they lost. And they lost in the most horrific way possible, and now it’s very much a series with two more games to go in Cleveland.

And what was so god damn galling is that it wasn’t Jose Ramirez, or Josh Naylor, or Steven Kwan who killed the Yankees. It was some rookie in the ninth inning named Jhonkensy Noel who was 1-for-15 in the postseason before the swing of his life tied the game. And then in the 10th it was David Fry who was 5-for-21 before the swing of his life.

I mean, are you kidding me? Those were the two guys who turned this into one of the greatest playoff games ever? It sucks to admit that it was an incredible game, one where the highlights will live forever. But the Yankees lost, so none of us wants to hear anything about how great the game actually was.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that it happened because we have seen the Yankees lose so many times in the most incredible ways, but this one rises to a higher plane because it’s mid-October, not mid-May. Now we know how the Diamondbacks felt in the 2001 World Series when the Yankees did this to them in Games 4 and 5 at Yankee Stadium.

“Sucks losing like that obviously, but kind of a classic game,” Aaron Boone said. “It was an amazing game to witness. That was playoff baseball. Both sides just kept coming with haymakers and big at-bats, big moments off two really good bullpens. They outlasted us tonight. They had one more good swing than us. We’ll be ready to roll tomorrow.”

Honestly, I have a tough time believing that. This loss is going to resonate, and with inconsistent Luis Gil pitching for the Yankees, I really don’t have much faith that the Yankees are going to bounce back in Game 4.

This series was on the brink of being over. And now it isn’t. Just an awful, awful, awful loss.

Here are my observations:

➤ By the time the game ended, it felt like Clarke Schmidt pitched about two weeks earlier. He wasn’t great, but he worked his way through 4.2 innings and was only trailing 2-1 when he came out because he made one bad pitch in the third inning that cost him two runs. He had worked out of a first-and-second, no-out jam in the first, then went 1-2-3 in the second, but with a 1-0 lead in the third he gave up a single to Brayan Rocchio on a ball that first baseman Jon Berti should have handled. It was an error, even though the official scorer gave Rocchio a hit, and naturally it burned the Yankees when rookie Kyle Manzardo crushed a two-run homer to give the Guardians their first lead of the series. After that he was fine, but Boone pulled him when he gave up a two-out double to Ramirez in the fifth.

➤ The Yankees had scored in the second inning when Anthony Volpe walked, Alex Verdugo doubled him to third, and then Jose Trevino - getting the start ahead of slump-ridden Austin Wells - singled to right. But then the worst baserunning team in MLB struck again as Trevino was inexplicably picked off first. Instead of first and third with one out, now there were two down and Gleyber Torres flied out so the Yankees got only the one run. Maddening that this shit never ends with this team.

➤ Here’s something else that was maddening. After Trevino’s single, the next 13 Yankees were retired by Cleveland starter Matthew Boyd and then stud reliever Case Smith. It wasn’t until the seventh inning that they got a man on base as Jazz Chisholm walked. And then Jon Berti immediately grounded into a double play, costing the Yankees a run because Volpe followed with a double.

➤ The Guardians had opened a 3-1 lead in the sixth when Ian Hamilton walked Lane Thomas, then hurt himself covering first base and had to come out of the game. Boone decided to go with one of his worst relievers, Tim Mayza, and he gave up an RBI single to Andres Gimenez.

➤ Tommy Kahnle was next and he pitched a scoreless seventh, but when Wells - who pinch hit for Trevino - struck out yet again (he is now 0-for-20 in the postseason) to start the eighth and Torres grounded out, there wasn’t a hint of the drama that was to come. The Yankees looked comatose at the plate, just like they have for so many postseason games in the Boone era. Until this. Juan Soto drew a walk from Hunter Gaddis, so Guardians manager Stephen Vogt turned to his outstanding closer, the nearly unhittable Emmanuel Clase, to face Aaron Judge.

➤ Clase was so dominant in the regular season it was comical. Batters literally had no chance against him as he gave up just five earned runs in 74.1 innings. But in the postseason, the Tigers got to him for four runs including a three-run game-winning home run hit by Kerry Carpenter, so the air of invincibility was wavering. Judge fell behind 0-2, took a ball outside, and then ripped a 99 mph cutter on the outer edge of the plate on a line to right and it just cleared the wall for a tying two-run homer. Holy shit! “I was just trying to get on base with a single to right,” Judge said. “When you’ve got a guy like that that’s (throwing) 102 mph, you don’t try to do too much.”

➤ And then it was a double holy shit! when Giancarlo Stanton battled Clase for seven pitches, fouling off three after falling behind 0-2, before launching a go-ahead homer. It was one of the most dynamic sequences in Yankees playoff history when you consider the situation, and the pitcher. And we should have all been celebrating a legacy moment. But this is baseball, there’s no kneeling out the clock.

➤ After surviving a sweaty eighth when Kahnle put two men on before Luke Weaver came on to strike out Fry, the Yankees even put up what felt like a huge insurance run in the ninth for a 5-3 lead on Torres’ sacrifice fly with a little help from the Guardians screwing up a rundown. And still, it wasn’t enough.

➤ Ramirez led off the bottom of the ninth with a grounder to first. Anthony Rizzo, who was inserted for defense in the eighth and whiffed on a ball in that inning, whiffed on this one, too, so Ramirez was aboard. However, Naylor immediately grounded into a double play and for a moment, I stupidly thought it was in the bag. But that’s why you can never think like that, because until the last out is recorded, the game is not over.

➤ Weaver got ahead of Thomas 0-2 and then for some inexplicable reason started to nibble. He missed with three straight, then left a fastball over the inner half and Thomas crushed it for a double. His run meant nothing and all that mattered was the next guy, Noel, who was sent up to pinch hit. I’m not kidding you here, but my glass half empty personality soared into overdrive because I knew this guy was going to launch and Jesus Christ, did he ever. He crushed a stupid changeup which, for the life of me I don’t know why the Yankees called for that pitch, and he pimped it his two-run blast for all it was worth.

➤ Tie game. It was the first down-to-the-last out, game-tying homer ever hit against the Yankees in the postseason. “One pitch away,” Weaver said. “I just really felt like I let the team down there, myself down. It feels a little devastating at the end of the day. I’ve just got to execute. It’s baseball, things like that happen. You’re 0-2, you’ve got to get him out there and not let momentum take over in their home ballpark. You see how rowdy they get. It just allows the moment to get big.”

➤ At that point, there was no way the Yankees were winning. Sure enough, they did nothing in the 10th, so on came Holmes, reprising the role he played most of the season: Buffoon of the bullpen. In a span of eight pitches the game was over. He gave up a line drive single to Bo Naylor who had been 0-for-14 in the postseason, and after getting two outs, he meatballed a center cut fastball and Fry killed it to win the game. “We’re supposed to go out there and do our job … to shut things down,” Holmes said. “Our expectation out there is to put up zeros every time. Weren’t able to do it. I probably got a little quick there with the sinker and threw it in the one spot I couldn’t throw it. If it’s a good sinker down and way below the zone, it’s probably a more favorable outcome.”

➤ With the loss, the Yankees are now 1-13 in their last 14 road ALCS games dating back to 2010, not great when they still have two more games to play in Cleveland. “Lots of ups and downs, it’s always going to be like that in the playoffs,” said Judge. “Great at-bat after great at-bat, both sides. Back-and-forth battle, two good teams getting after each other. They were able to come away with one last big swing. I wish we were on the other end of it.”

➤ “This is what we’ve been great at all year and what that room has been great at all year,” Boone said. “We’ve had some tough losses that we’ve bounced back from. That stings when you get left there like that, especially after you battle back against them like that.”