Using 'bunts, bombs and chaos', the Guardians make it a series with the Yankees

CLEVELAND – Luke Weaver, the Yankees’ bright, perceptive and everyday closer, had a helpful reminder Thursday night when asked how he would recover from being one out away from a three-games-to-none lead in the American League Championship Series.

“One pitch away, honestly,” Weaver said, explaining that he’d gotten a double play in the bottom of the ninth and pumped two quick strikes to the next hitter. “I’ve just got to execute. I really feel like I let the team down there.”

Weaver strayed far from the zone with his next three pitches before Lane Thomas doubled off the left field wall. Jhonkensy Noel followed with his seismic home run, the one that lost the Yankees’ lead, the one that pushed them from the verge of a pennant into an actual, competitive ALCS with the Cleveland Guardians.

If the Guardians’ 7-5 victory propels them to a pennant, David Fry’s two-run blast off Clay Holmes in the 10th inning will stand as one of the grandest moments in the history of the franchise. But it should not rattle the Yankees. If it does, they wouldn’t deserve the World Series berth that’s eluded them for 15 years.

What happened on Thursday was baseball at its best, superstars and bench guys taking turns playing hero. Baseball people know when they’re a part of something special. There’s a difference between blowing a game and simply getting beat.

“Two good teams going after it,” said Aaron Judge, whose laser-beam homer off Emmanuel Clase tied the score in the eighth, setting up Giancarlo Stanton for a go-ahead shot. “Just great at-bat after great at-bat.”

Yankees manager Aaron Boone, a third-generation baseball man with a keen sense of history, called it a classic.

“Amazing game to witness,” Boone said. “That was playoff baseball. Both sides just kept coming with haymakers and big at-bats, big moments off of two really good bullpens. They outlasted us tonight. They had one more good swing than us.”

Fry’s final swing robbed the Yankees of an easy path to the World Series. But they were never entitled to that, anyway. Sure, they spend $200 million more on their payroll than Cleveland does. It got them two more victories in the regular season.

“You don’t really come in ever thinking you’re going to sweep a team,” Weaver said. “I mean, 4 and 0, that’s a very, very hard thing to do. We see it all the time how these games go back and forth. I don’t want to say it’s a surprise, because they’re not going to let us win and we sure want to take it.”

He added: “That was a huge win for them, but it shouldn’t it shouldn’t shake us in any way. It should just be: you tip your cap and you just keep going and you give credit where it’s due.”

Exactly. The Guardians could have – and maybe should have – won Game 2, when so much went right for them but they still couldn’t even the series. Now, they’ve pulled themselves back from the brink. At least one of the Yankees has seen it here before.

“I’ve been standing directly on that field, I think in the eighth inning, when they tied the game on a big home run,” said first baseman Anthony Rizzo, the former Cub, who watched helplessly as Rajai Davis romped joyously around the bases in the finale of the 2016 World Series.

“Thankfully it wasn’t Game 7. So this is a series. They’re a really good team and we know that and we’ll bounce back tomorrow and be ready to win.”

The Cubs had one inning – and a miracle rain delay – to regroup from Davis’ game-tying body blow and take the title from Cleveland. The Yankees still have the series lead, with two more games here and two more, if necessary, in the Bronx.

And history is filled with examples of teams that won the first two games of a best-of-seven at home, lost Game 3 on a walk-off hit, then came back to win. In the last few decades of the World Series, it’s been a fairly regular phenomenon:

1980 Phillies: Walked off by Kansas City’s Willie Aikens in Game 3, won World Series in six.

1988 Dodgers: Walked off by Oakland’s Mark McGwire in Game 3, won World Series in five.

1991 Twins: Walked off by Atlanta’s Mark Lemke in Game 3, worn World Series in seven.

1995 Braves: Walked off by Cleveland’s Eddie Murray in Game 3, won World Series in six.

2018 Red Sox: walked off by the Dodgers’ Max Muncy in Game 3, won World Series in five.

The reason for this – if there is a reason besides the wonderful randomness of baseball – seems part physical, part psychological. The team with the 2-0 lead is usually better. But the team returning home in an 0-2 hole gets a lift from the home fans and the charged circumstances. When the better team prevails in the end, Game 3 becomes merely a dead cat bounce.

Then again, there’s been so much postseason history that fans of either team can almost always find something to make them sleep better. For Cleveland, slaying the Yankees with a postseason homer could be a very good omen. Consider this from James Smyth, researcher extraordinaire for the YES Network:

Postseason Walk-Off HR vs Yankees
1957 WS Gm 4 at MLN Eddie Mathews
1960 WS Gm 7 at PIT Bill Mazeroski
2003 WS Gm 4 at FLA Alex Gonzalez
2004 ALCS Gm 4 at BOS David Ortiz
2019 ALCS Gm 2 at HOU Carlos Correa
2019 ALCS Gm 6 at HOU Jose Altuve
2024 ALCS Gm 3 at CLE David Fry

— James Smyth (@JamesSmyth621) October 18, 2024

As every Yankee fan knows, all of those series ended in defeat. To keep that streak going, the Guardians will have to stick to their formula, which finally showed up on Thursday.

Eight pitchers combined for mostly stellar work. Second baseman Andrés Giménez and first baseman Josh Naylor made a double-gasp highlight for a pivotal out in the 10th. The Guardians stole three bases, and all four bench players wound up getting hits: Fry, Noel, Will Brennan and Bo Naylor.

“Bunts, bombs and chaos,” Fry said. “That’s what we talked about. It felt like tonight we got back to that.”

The Yankees still have the edge, not just in games, but in depth. The Guardians, who were already struggling to cobble a rotation, will turn to Gavin Williams (3-10, 4.86) in Game 4 and perhaps Ben Lively, who was left off the roster until Alex Cobb’s back injury, in Game 5. Their heralded bullpen has looked mortal, with a 3.80 ERA this postseason.

But they’ve made this a series, and a truly memorable one if Thursday’s mayhem sets them on a path to the World Series. The Yankees should know better than to dwell on it.

“A loss is a loss, whether it’s a clean one and we lost 3-1, or like this,” Stanton said. “This one obviously stings a bit more, but at the end of the day, an L’s an L – by 1, 2, 8, whatever. Tomorrow’s a new day. We’ve got to get it done.”

Getting it done is supposed to be hard. For the Yankees, it seemed that easy for a while. Now it doesn’t. Welcome to October.

(Top photo of Jhonkensy Noel: Nick Cammett/Getty Images)