Yankees' decision to send Giancarlo Stanton was an ill-fated sign of desperation

NEW YORK — The earth has been moved and the chairs have been arranged. The headstone has been chosen and the epitaph is almost complete:

Here lie the New York Yankees, who lost the 2024 World Series in …

Four games? Five?

All that’s left is to finish the engraving after a 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 on Monday night at Yankee Stadium.

“We know our backs are against the wall,” Aaron Judge said.

The Yankees have dug themselves a 3-0 hole that might as well as be six feet deep. No team before them has pulled off what they now must do in the World Series. In fact, no team in their position has even forced a sixth game.

“Hopefully, we can go be this amazing story and shock the world,” manager Aaron Boone said.

An obituary for these Yankees could start any number of ways, but the vision of Giancarlo Stanton rumbling toward home plate in the fourth inning might be an apt place to begin. It wasn’t about whether it was the right call to send the lead-footed Stanton barreling around third base to try to score on Anthony Volpe’s two-out single in the fourth inning down 3-0.

The problem was that the Yankees had even put themselves in that position in the first place.

“In that situation, two outs, you’ve got to roll the dice on it,” Stanton said.

So far this World Series, the Yankees have been outscored 14-7. During the regular season, New York’s offense — powered by Aaron Judge and Juan Soto — finished third in runs scored and first in home runs. But Judge is just 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the World Series and is in the midst of yet another abysmal October performance. The Yankees also couldn’t trust that the bottom of their lineup — Anthony Rizzo, Alex Verdugo and Jose Trevino — would drive in Stanton, even from third base.

So as Volpe’s liner zipped into shallow left field and landed in front of Teoscar Hernández, third base coach Luis Rojas began waving to Stanton to run home. Hernández has one of the stronger arms in baseball, averaging 87.5 mph. But he’s also slow getting to most balls, and he isn’t the most accurate, either. An opposing scout said his club almost always runs on Hernández when it has the chance, and that the Yankees’ game plan likely was to do the same. The scout spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

But in Stanton, the Yankees had yet another problem. He’s their slowest runner, constantly on cruise control as he tries to avoid the soft-tissue leg injuries that have plagued him in recent years. All season, he’s run out grounders with the urgency of a recreational jogger. He’s perhaps their most fragile player, yet he has been their best postseason hitter, with a team-best six home runs and a 1.110 OPS these playoffs. They didn’t want to see him attempt to turn on the afterburners, let alone slide into home.

But that’s how desperate the Yankees were. Starting pitcher Clarke Schmidt had put them in a 3-0 deficit, giving up a two-run shot in the first inning to Freddie Freeman and an RBI single in the third inning to Mookie Betts before exiting after just 2 2/3 innings. His opposition, Walker Buehler, was holding the Yankees’ bats down.

So, the Yankees sent Stanton home even though it was risky, and it backfired as Hernández made a perfect throw to nab him.

Boone didn’t condemn sending Stanton, adding that he needed to rewatch the video.

“We were going to challenge Teoscar there a little bit, especially when he’s moving to the right,” Boone said. “Credit to him. He had a good throw. I thought ‘G’ had a pretty good jump and (moved well) around third base. Tough when you’re behind a few there. But a perfect throw is able to get him there.”

Did Stanton feel like he was sent because the Yankees’ offense needed any help it could get?

“I think just in that spot you’ve got to roll until you get something going,” he said. “Get kick-started.”

Now, it’s too late for the Yankees to get much going. They will go into Game 4 on Tuesday unwilling to start ace Gerrit Cole on short rest, opting instead for rookie Luis Gil, who has made just one other start this postseason.

They could win. But history says that it wouldn’t matter, that they would fail sooner than later and that the Dodgers likely would end up celebrating a title on their home turf.

“In our heads is to win one game,” Judge said. “That’s how it starts. Even though we’re down 3-0, if we win one game, who knows what will happen the next couple.”

“We’re not where we want to be right now,” first baseman Rizzo said.

Except it’s no longer about where the Yankees want to be. It’s about how that epitaph will end.

Four games? Five?

(Top photo of Stanton sliding into home: Luke Hales / Getty Images)