The Yankees Are Moving on to the ALCS as They Close Out Kansas City

Gerrit Cole was the ace that the Yankees needed him to be, the bullpen continued its recent dominance, and despite another mostly rough night on offense, there were just enough key hits to produce three runs to beat the Royals and close out the ALDS in four games. Lets get to it.

Oct. 10: Yankees 3, Royals 1

Gerrit Cole knew this had to be his night. This is why the Yankees are paying there 34-year-old power righty $324 million over the life of his contract, to pitch in games where the stakes are enormous, and Thursday night certainly qualified in that category.

Game 4 of the ALDS where a victory ends the series and dispatches the pesky Royals, one of those teams that you don’t want to let hang around, particularly for a winner-take-all Game 5, and Cole needed to be an ace.

That was something he was not able to do in Game 1 when the Royals scored four runs off him in five innings and the Yankees barely survived. He needed to dominate them this time, and for seven innings, that’s exactly what he did and now the Yankees are heading to the ALCS where they will host either Cleveland or Detroit Monday night.

“I mean, I’m fired up,” said Cole after the champagne hurricane in the clubhouse was over. “Had a couple of IPAs with the boys, sprayed some champagne. There’s so much baseball left. We’re obviously confident, we’re focused, we’re trying to improve the brand of baseball that we’re playing as we continue to get deeper into October. I’ve got to be honest with you, the Royals are a damn good ballclub. That was a really tough series.”

For most of his seven innings, during which he gave up just one run on six hits, no walks, and struck out four, Cole cruised and was hardly in trouble. The run came home in the sixth to cut the Yankees lead to 3-1, but then in the seventh, oh my, Cole nearly gave all of us a heart attack, including Aaron Boone.

“My heart skipped a beat on Isbel,” Boone said after Kyle Isbel missed by only a few feet of hitting a game-tying two-run homer, a 370-foot shot to right-center that would have easily been a home run at Yankee Stadium as well as 23 other parks, but Kauffman Stadium held it.

“I thought Gerrit was great,” Boone continued. “Really efficient again. I thought right from the jump, his fastball was really good, and he had the command of it, and then he was able to mix other things off of that. But it started again with the fastball tonight, being in a really good spot. Credit to the Royals; it’s a really good team over there. All four of these games were tight and I thought well-played games. I thought we did a lot of really good things throughout the series. But Gerrit setting the tone tonight, really setting us up for the back end tonight.”

This will be the Yankees’ 19th appearance in the LCS which began in 1969, the most of any team in MLB with the Dodgers next at 15 appearances. And they will have a chance to win their 41st AL championship which quite obviously is the most in MLB history.

“We get to go play for a pennant now,” Boone said. “This hopefully is not the end of the road for us and we expect more. I feel like we’re pretty well-rounded. We’re not perfect by any means but I’ll take our chances.”

Here are my observations:

➤ I thought it was huge that the Yankees handed Cole a 1-0 lead before he even took the mound. Don’t underestimate that because it allowed him to settle in right away, even though it was a minimal cushion. Gleyber Torres, who has been a completely different player since mid-August when he went into the leadoff spot, doubled on Michael Wacha’s fourth pitch, and he raced home when Juan Soto hit Wacha’s sixth pitch to right for an RBI single. Two batters in, and the Yankees were ahead for good.

➤ Giancarlo Stanton kept his roll going with a leadoff double in the second, but then three straight terrible at bats by Jazz Chisholm, Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo left him right there, so that sucked. So did Austin Wells grounding into a double play after Aaron Judge led off the fourth with a walk.

➤ But in the fifth, the Yankees finally put a rally together and it produced a 2-0 lead. Volpe singled but was erased by the usual Verdugo grounder, though at least he didn’t get doubled up. That was big because Jon Berti and Torres followed with singles to get Verdugo home. “Awesome,” Boone said of Torres. “He’s just been so good at the top of our lineup now for a couple months. That’s what we’ve been watching for the last couple months. I don't know how many times he ended up walking in this series (it was five, plus three hits). He’s getting on base at such a high clip. But you see the aggression, too. First pitch of the game, here we go, boom. Then the RBI, obviously, to extend the lead. He’s just been having such quality at-bats now for a couple of months, and it’s been huge.”

➤ And then in the sixth, they tacked on one more run as Judge finally woke up from his coma and doubled to left-center and eventually scored from third on Stanton’s single through a drawn in infield. What a series it was for Stanton as he was the driving force for the offense. “That’s what I expected coming here,’’ Stanton said. “The ups and downs of the year are all test drives for now. We have to keep pushing. We have an opportunity to keep it rolling. We have to take care of business.”

➤ From there, it was all about the pitching. Cole got through five scoreless and his only wobble came in the sixth when the Royals scored their only run. Maikel Garcia led off with a single, but then Michael Massey hit a hot shot to first where Berti made an excellent play. He fielded the ball, stepped on first, then threw a strike to Volpe who tagged out Garcia for a double play. For some stupid reason, there were words exchanged there and Chisholm seemed to start it so the benches and bullpens emptied, one of the dumbest things possible, especially in that situation. Thankfully, nothing happened.

➤ After that, it seemed like the Royals got revved up because Bobby Witt, who the Yankees did a fantastic job on all series, finally did something, singling to right. And then he scored on a double by Vinnie Pasquantino, a guy who drove in 97 runs this season but, like Witt, pretty much did nothing in this series. That brought Salvador Perez up as the tying run but Cole got him to pop up behind the plate and all seemed well. It should have been inning over, but Austin Wells dropped it, so right there, of course I’m thinking now Perez gets a mulligan and he’s gonna tie it with a homer. But the aging catcher also had a rough series and he popped out to Torres on the next pitch.

➤ In the seventh, Cole got the first two outs, but Tommy Pham - who had four hits and a sacrifice fly off Cole in this series - ripped his third single of the night. Isbel came up, a guy who hit only eight homers in 426 plate appearances this season, and he nearly created chaos. Cole left a fastball over the plate and Isbel drilled it to the warning track in right. When he hit it, I thought it was gone, and I think Cole and the Yankees thought it was gone. What a break that the game wasn’t at Yankee Stadium because it would have been gone, but not at Kaufman Stadium. “It means a lot,” Cole said. “It means a lot. It was a big game. It was a fun game. It was a great battle. Just a great battle. Fun to be part of.”

➤ That was scary enough for Boone so he yanked Cole at 87 pitches which was the right move, and he handed the ball to Clay Holmes. Look, Holmes has really gotten it together since he was demoted from the closer role, and he has never given up a run in 13 postseason innings which is amazing. But I was worried because it felt like he was due for a calamity. Well, I apologize because he was dominant - 1-2-3 on 10 pitches, see ya later. And then Luke Weaver took over in the ninth and he was even better - 1-2-3 on nine pitches, sparing us all plenty of stress because he had to face the heart of the order - Pasquantino, Perez and Yuli Gurriel. It was a mismatch in favor of Weaver.

➤ The Yankees bullpen was outstanding in all four games. They threw 15.2 scoreless innings allowing just eight hits and four walks with 15 strikeouts. How good was that? It was the third-most scoreless bullpen innings ever in a postseason series behind only 18.1 by the Twins in the 1991 ALCS against the Blue Jays, and 17 by the Dodgers in the 2017 NLCS against the Cubs. That was the biggest key to this series victory because Cole and Carlos Rodon put forth mediocre starts in the first two games, and Clarke Schmidt was very good until he wasn’t in Game 3 before Cole finally delivered a big one.

➤ As for the offense, the Yankees hit just .220 and scored only 14 runs - six in Game 1 - across the four games. With men in scoring position it was a gruesome 6-for-35 with 37 men left on base. That has to change in the ALCS.

➤ Speaking of the ALCS, which will start Monday night at 8:08 p.m. at Yankee Stadium, we won’t know the Yankees’ opponent until Saturday night when the Guardians and Tigers play Game 5 in Cleveland. Thursday was huge for the Yankees for two reasons: First, Cleveland stayed alive and now has a chance to advance, and I would much rather be facing that team than Detroit which just seems like one of those teams of destiny. But even if Detroit wins, it will do so by using the soon-to-be AL Cy Young Award winner, Tarik Skubal. The guy is a beast, and if the Tigers had wrapped up the series in Game 4, Skubal would be locked and loaded for Game 1 in the Bronx. Now, if the Tigers advance he probably won’t be available until Game 3.

➤ “It means everything,” Judge said. “We haven’t, since I’ve been here with the Yankees, we haven’t secured a pennant. The group that we have, how special this is, just excited for this opportunity. It’s going to be something special. What a series for the boys this DS was against a good Royals team, so excited about the CS.”