Yankees Weren't Great, But They Are Two Games Away From 41st AL Pennant

The Yankees played much the way they played for most of the regular season in the first two games of the ALCS and they should be feeling very fortunate to have won both over the Guardians as the series shifts to Progressive Field in Cleveland. Lets get to it.

I must say, I greatly appreciate how the Guardians - who are a typically very sound fundamental team which makes them the complete opposite of the Yankees - did their part to gift wrap a two games to none series lead for the Yankees.

I mean, let’s be honest here. The Yankees pitched very well with the exception of Gerrit Cole Tuesday night because as the ace of the staff, that just wasn’t good enough. But there was the usual awfulness at the plate with runners in scoring position, 2-for-16 in the two games; and there was the usual baserunning blunders which led radio play-by-play man John Sterling to say Tuesday, “Boy, if that wasn’t the Yankees, that’s what they do; they run the bases like drunks.” Truer words have never come out of that 86-year-old man’s mouth.

There was just enough bad where, if the Guardians hadn’t bumbled and stumbled over the past two nights at Yankee Stadium, this would be an entirely different series as it heads to Cleveland for at least the next two games, and most likely three.

The Guardians’ third inning pitching follies in Game 1 Monday night handed the Yankees two critical runs in what became a 5-2 victory, and then Tuesday night in Game 2, they made two huge fielding errors that directly led to two unearned runs, and their usually dominant bullpen gave up three runs, two coming on a home run by struggling Aaron Judge which put the game out of reach as the Yankees won 6-3.

It’s the little things that you do, or don’t do, in the postseason that decide these games. The Yankees were pretty lucky that their failures in key situations, and the other mistakes they made, ended up not mattering, while it seemed like every time Cleveland blundered, it was costly.

I know, I sound like my usual pissy self. After all, the Yankees are in a commanding position and are two wins away from the World Series, but this Cleveland team is still a pesky bunch, and this thing is not over.

Like Michael Kay said on the YES postgame show, this still hasn’t been the Yankees playing their ‘A’ game, but they’re up 2-0 and that’s the most important thing.

Oct. 14: Yankees 5, Guardians 2

The Lead: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

I’m not going to say the Yankees didn’t deserve to win Game 1, but as I said above, they sure had plenty of help from a Guardians team that looked peculiarly nervous in the opener, at least as far as I could tell watching on my phone while trying to cover the Bills-Jets game.

That third inning was something, wasn’t it? Juan Soto led off with a home run which was fine, but that ended up being the only hit even though the Yankees sent seven more men to the plate and scored two more runs.

Alex Cobb and overwhelmed rookie Joey Cantillo - normally a starter who probably had no business being used out of the bullpen in this situation when the Guardians had several other more worthy candidates - combined to walk four men, and Cantillo sent two of them home with wild pitches and as it turned out, that 3-0 lead would be all the Yankees needed.

The kid owned it afterward. “The control, obviously, was not there,” Cantillo said. “Just got to be better next time. That performance was obviously the difference in the game. So that's on me.”

Game notes and observations:

➤ Carlos Rodon was fantastic. Look, I know we were all worried about him, especially after what happened against the Royals when he came out breathing fire and looking like he would throw a perfect game, only to wilt within four innings like a fighter who punched himself out. In this game, he was much more in control of his emotions and he pounded the strike zone, rendering the Guardians helpless. He went six innings and the only mistake he made was serving up a solo homer in the sixth to No. 9 hitter Bryan Rocchio. He allowed just two other hits, no walks, struck out nine, and he got 25 swings and misses against a team that is normally very good at putting the ball in play.

➤ After Rodon, Clay Holmes kept his resurgence alive with a perfect seventh inning, but Tim Hill faltered in a goofy eighth inning as he gave up a run on three straight singles, forcing Boone to call on Luke Weaver for a five-out save. Weaver entered with men on first and third and got a huge strikeout of Will Brennan, but then had to face the dangerous Jose Ramirez who stepped in as the tying run. That was a tense moment, but he hit a weak grounder to second and that was that. Weaver walked the leadoff man in the ninth, then went 3-0 on Josh Naylor - who might want to mix in a salad sometime soon - before coming back to whiff him, and then struck out the next two to end the game.

➤ Offensively, the Yankees continue to drive us nuts. It’s rather amazing that they’ve won five of six playoff games hitting the way they have. They managed six hits, but the difference was Cleveland’s generosity in the third, plus Soto homering, and then Giancarlo Stanton hitting a piss missile in the seventh that made it 5-1.

➤ Judge had a sacrifice fly to make it 4-0 in the fourth, and he drew a walk, but by night’s end he was hitting .133 in the postseason. And Austin Wells (.105) and Jazz Chisholm (.100) continued their awful postseasons by going a combined 0-for-8 with four strikeouts.

➤ Anthony Rizzo is active for the series which was definitely a surprise, and he singled in three at bats, but we’ll see what he can do the rest of the way.

Oct. 15: Yankees 6, Guardians 3

The Lead: Finally, Aaron Judge rises

I can make a pretty convincing argument that Judge’s breakthrough home run in the seventh inning was one of the biggest of his career, and here’s why. He has hit 14 in the playoffs, and several were pretty big, but 11 of those came in 34 games between 2017 and 2020.

In the 15 games since then during the postseasons of 2021, 2022 and 2024, Judge has been a head case in October with a slash line of .146/.250/.273 for an OPS of .523 and had just two homers and four RBI heading into Tuesday. In other words, he was Alex Verdugo between May and August.

He started Tuesday 0-for-3 with a sacrifice fly which came after the Guardians intentionally walked Soto because they preferred facing Judge with the bases loaded which shows just how much he’s been struggling. “You want to try to get two outs with one pitch,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said of that strategy. “You want to try to find a way to get out of that inning.”

No matter what cliches Judge spews to reporters day after day, he was spooked in the postseason. His woeful lack of production was clearly in his head because you can’t be as great a player as he was in 2022 and then 2024 but then be as bad as he’s been on the big stage of October.

But then he came up against a very good pitcher in Hunter Gaddis in the seventh and crushed a top of the zone fastball to dead center for a 414-foot two-run bomb that put the game out of reach. “I was excited it went out,” Judge said. “You never know on these windy, chilly nights what that ball is going to do when you hit it to center here. The ghosts were pulling it out there to Monument Park, that’s for sure.”

We can only hope that Judge is now engaged and he’ll get back to being one of the best hitters in MLB as the postseason moves on.

Game notes and observations:

➤ For the second time this postseason, Cole was tremendously underwhelming and the Yankees were damn lucky they were still leading when he walked off the mound after just 4.1 sloppy innings. He started great with a 1-2-3 first, and gave up just a single to Naylor in the second, but then it became a grind. “Just got to do better,” Cole said. “Got to do better. I lost a little bit of the zone, a few too many walks again. But I think they threw a lot of quality at-bats together, and they strung them together, and they obviously - they won some of those long at-bats, and they ended up putting enough pressure on us that it didn’t allow us to continue to cruise and keep going deep.”

➤ In the third he allowed a single to Rocchio who, for the life of me I don’t understand why he’s batting ninth. He’s batting .435 in the postseason and puts on a It’s almost as puzzling as Boone continuing to stuff automatic out Wells into the cleanup spot. Cole then walked Kwan, but he escaped by getting Ramirez on a fly to center. And speaking of escapes, he worked out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the fourth, striking out Rocchio to win an ultra annoying and tense nine-pitch battle.

➤ But in the fifth, Cole’s luck ran out. Two singles and a walk loaded the bases with no outs, Naylor delivered one with a sacrifice fly, and when Cole re-loaded the bases with a walk, Boone had to bring in Holmes because the leverage was so high. Holmes permitted one inherited runner to score on a grounder but he struck out light-hitting Austin Hedges to keep the Yankees ahead 3-2.

➤ That set the stage for Hill who bounced back from a rough Game 1 by retiring all five men he faced in the sixth and seventh, just a great job. Tommy Kahnle took the baton and got four outs, and Weaver closed it in the ninth, though he did get tagged for a solo homer by Ramirez which ended his consecutive scoreless innings streak at 17 which dated back to Sept. 6. Like Judge homering, we can only hope this doesn’t roust Ramirez from his big-time struggles lately.

➤ Tanner Bibee, who by default is the best starter the Guardians have in this series, did not have it. Gleyber Torres doubled, Soto singled, and then Judge reached when Rocchio dropped his pop fly as Torres scored. But then Wells, Stanton and Chisholm all failed and two men were left on base.

➤ In the second, the Yankees scored two and knocked Bibbe out of the game, but it should have been more. Volpe and Rizzo singled and Verdugo doubled for one. After Torres popped out, Vogt intentionally passed Soto to get to Judge and he flied to center to send Rizzo home for a 3-0 lead before Wells struck out yet again.

➤ How about the follies in the sixth? Chisholm led off with a double, raising his postseason average to .130. Volpe then walked, but moments later, Chisholm was inexplicably picked off at second. Rizzo followed with a double and Volpe was able to score when right fielder Will Brennan bobbled the ball. Had Chisholm not been so dumb, it would have been 5-2 instead of 4-2. As if that wasn’t enough, Rizzo got picked off second, too, so that was two outs on the bases, a Yankee tradition unlike any other. Again, as I said, the Yankees were damn lucky all their wasted scoring chances didn’t come back to bite them.

➤ The Guardians have not announced their pitching plans, but here’s what the Yankees have planned for the next two: Game 3, Thursday at 5:08 on TBS it’s Clarke Schmidt, and in Game 4 Friday at 8:08 on TBS, it’s Luis Gil making his postseason debut. If there’s a Game 5 (there will be), it will be Saturday at 8:08 on TBS, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I hate the late starting times!