The Yankees faced elimination in the do-or-die Game 5 of the ALDS and staved it off for a second straight game. The Yankees beat the Guardians 5-1 and are headed to the ALCS.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After Aaron Boone mismanaged the Yankees to the brink of elimination in Game 3, I wrote:

I do think the Yankees will win Game 4 and force a Game 5, but I don’t know how they will win Game 5 without an available starter and with their bullpen already fatigued after just three games.

The Yankees did win Game 4 and the weather took care of my worrying about an available starter for Game 5. Sure, it absolutely sucked to go to the Stadium on Monday night, only to sit there until 9:20 p.m. and then go home having not seen a baseball game, but in the end it worked out.

2. The rainout took away the Guardians’ advantage of having a completely rested elite bullpen with the Yankees’ bullpen in shambles, and more importantly, it allowed the Yankees to replace Jameson Taillon with Nestor Cortes on three days rest. Taillon’s inability to put hitters away Phil Hughes-style would have likely ended badly for the Yankees with the Guardians’ contact ability. (That is, unless Aaron Civale was also going to give up a three-run home run in the first inning if the game had been played on Monday night. I still can’t believe Terry Francona thought that decision gave his team the best chance to win Game 5. I’m glad he did.)

3. Cortes was awesome. He only needed 61 pitches to get through five innings, and it would have been even less if not for the Yankees’ clusterfuck in left field that resulted in yet another bloop single for the Guardians and led to the only run they would score in the game. I would have sent Cortes back out for the sixth inning to face the Guardians’ 2-3-4 hitters for a third time, though it worked out with Jonathan Loaisiga, Clay Holmes and Wandy Peralta combing to pitch four scoreless innings. Those three were outstanding in the series, despite insane batted ball luck for the Guardians with their never-ending parade of bloop and infield singles. Boone pushed the right buttons in Game 5 (even if they were some of the easiest buttons ever to push), and with an ALCS appearance, it’s now a guarantee he will be back for 2023, and Brian Cashman as well.

4. The key to winning Game 5 was always to get an early lead. I was nervous when Steven Kwan led the game off with a single, thinking he would steal second, move to third on an out and score on another out. If the Guardians jumped out to an early lead, Francona may have skipped Civale all together and gone straight to the elite relievers. Those elite relievers pitched seven innings and allowed one run in those seven innings. If the Guardians had scored in the top of the first, like I feared they would, the entire game would have been different.

They didn’t, but the Yankees did. Gleyber Torres drew a leadoff walk and after Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch with one out, Giancarlo Stanton crushed a 2-0 pitch, sending a line-drive missile over the right-field wall for an early 3-0 lead.

5. Nearly the entire Yankees lineup finished the five-game series with ugly overall numbers. The two outliers were Rizzo and Harrison Bader. However, everyone had their moment, even if their numbers suggest otherwise.

Torres finished the series with a .396 OPS, but had the leadoff single in Game 4 and the leadoff walk in Game 5. Judge had four hits in the series, but two of them were home runs. Stanton hit .125, but provided two first-inning home runs. Donaldson only had five hits (all singles), but did draw four walks and picked up a base hit before Bader’s big home run in Game 4. Oswaldo Cabrera hit .105 with a .421 OPS, but hit a double and two-run home run in Game 3, and Jose Trevino had the go-ahead sacrifice fly in Game 1.

The Yankees can’t have that kind of collection of ugly numbers across the board in the ALCS. They did in 2019 (aside from Torres and DJ LeMahieu) and it eliminated them.

6. On paper, there is no reason to think the Yankees can win the ALCS. The Astros have a better lineup, a better rotation, a better bullpen and a better manager. On top of all that, the Astros haven’t played since Saturday, are well rested and have their rotation set up exactly how they want. The Yankees have just played four games in the last five days, had the pressure or elimination in the last two of those games, only have a 24-hour layoff between the last pitch of Game 5 of the ALDS and Game 1 of the ALCS and are being forced to use Jameson Taillon in the series opener against Justin Verlander.

Now some of that is the Yankees’ own doing. They could have swept the Guardians (like the Astros did the Mariners), and have had the same amount of time off as the Astros if they hadn’t blown two-run leads in Games 2 and 3. They could have their rotation set up with Cole against Verlander, Cortes in Game 2 and Luis Severino in Game 3. Their bullpen could be well rested, having not needed to pitch six additional on-the-brink-of-elimination innings.

There isn’t one facet of the game or schedule that the Yankees have an advantage with. They are an underdog to the Astros in the ALCS for the third time in six seasons.

7. There is this common idea the Yankees “just need to win one in Houston” to have a chance in the series. I don’t think that’s true. In 2019, they did just that, winning Game 1 easily before blowing Game 2, and they wound up losing in six. In 2017, they lost the first two games in Houston, won all three at home, and lost in seven, after scoring just three runs total in the four road games. There is no right path to winning the ALCS, but the Yankees are going to need to finally solve the Astros’ pitching if they plan on reaching the World Series for the second time in 19 years. And to do so, they are going to need to sacrifice defense for offense.

It was one thing to get by the Guardians with the lineups the Yankees ran out there in the five games. That won’t work against the Astros. The Astros are going to play with one automatic out in their lineup in Martin Maldonado and the Yankees need to match that. No more than one automatic out in their lineup. (Jose Trevino, cough, cough.) This means either Giancarlo Stanton or Matt Carpenter needs to play left field with the other serving as the designated hitter.

There’s no need to worry about defense or balls in the gap in Houston’s left field. Either a batted ball will fall in front of the left fielder or it will be a home run. Anything else will be a catchable fly ball or a ball off the wall, which nothing can be done about. It’s why Yordan Alvarez plays left field for the Astros. Carpenter and Stanton can handle that. They have to handle it.

8. Things would be much different if the Yankees had Carpenter at full strength and DJ LeMahieu, Andrew Benintendi and Michael King healthy, and if Frankie Montas were healthy and pitching like the guy the Yankees thought they traded for. The Yankees with those players? That team I would feel confident in beating the Astros in the ALCS. This roster? It’s going to be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. The Yankees are going to need their stars to play like such, and they are likely going to need some unlikely sources to provide magical moments. Something like Taillon pitching seven shutout innings in Game 1 against Verlander, or Bader continuing to hit like Judge and Stanton.

9. I don’t expect the Yankees with their injuries, first-round bullpen usage and schedule to beat the Astros. The Astros were the better team in the regular season (especially against the Yankees having never trailed them in their seven head-to-head games) and they are set up to be the better team in the postseason. The Yankees needed to win the 1-seed in the American League to beat the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup. They failed to do that. Then they needed to sweep the Guardians to have a chance to beat the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup. They failed to do that. Then they needed to beat the Guardians in four games to have a prayer to beat the Astros in the ALCS. Now? Now they’re coming off a five-game series that went the distance and are landing in Houston on the same day they will be asked to beat the soon-to-be-named AL Cy Young winner who has owned the Yankees in the postseason in five different seasons and with two different teams.

10. The Yankees aren’t expected to win this series, and that’s exactly why I think they can. These Yankees have always been most successful when success isn’t expected. The 2017 Yankees weren’t supposed to be a playoff team, and they came within one win of the World Series. After coming within one win of the World Series and adding Giancarlo Stanton, the 2018 Yankees were expected to get back to the World Series and instead were embarrassed in the ALDS. The 2019 Yankees were expected to build off the previous two seasons and reach the World Series and they instead lost three of the last four games of the ALCS. The 2020 Yankees had the league’s top payroll and were eliminated in the ALDS by the team with the league’s lowest payroll. The 2021 Yankees were the odds-on favorite to win the American League, and they instead had to play in the wild-card game, which they lost. Ever since this Yankees core started playing with expectations (and a new manager) back in 2018, they have failed miserably, never getting as close to the World Series as the 2017 expectation-less team did.

This version of these Yankees were supposed to finish behind the Blue Jays in the division. They finished seven games ahead of the Blue Jays, winning the division. When they lost Game 3 of the ALDS, they were supposed to be upset by the Guardians. Now they’re going to play a team and organization that owned them in the regular season and has owned them in the postseason. These Yankees and this core finally reaching the World Series and finally getting past the Astros to do so would be a perfect bookend to way this core started back in 2017.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees played their first elimination game of the postseason in Game 4 of the ALDS and survived with a 4-2 win in Cleveland to force a Game 5 in New York.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was confident the Yankees would win Game 4 of the ALDS, and remain confident they can still win the series despite their manager putting them on the brink of elimination after Game 3. The way I went into Game 1 thinking Gerrit Cole would shut down the Guardians, was how I went into Game 4, and Cole did just that, going seven innings and allowing just two earned runs. One of those two runs came on a Jose Ramirez RBI single that was blooped into left field with an expected batting average of .090. In comparison, Gleyber Torres’ inning-ending double play in the fifth had an expected batting average of .650 and resulted in two outs. Just bad luck for the Yankees. The kind of back luck they experienced as the Guardians blooped and ground ball singled their way to a comeback in the ninth inning in Game 3. Sometimes baseball sucks, and with the batted ball luck the Guardians had in Games 2 and 3, baseball sucked a lot the last two days.

But baseball didn’t suck on Sunday night. Not with Cole saving the Yankees’ season and forcing a Game 5 on Monday night at the Stadium. Sure, if the Yankees win and advance to the ALCS their rotation and bullpen will both be a mess, while the Astros will have had three full days off and will have their rotation set up how they want with their bullpen completely rested. But I will worry about the Astros if I get the opportunity to worry about the Astros. For now, it’s time worry about Game 5. And there’s a lot to worry about for Game 5.

2. The goal in the postseason is to minimize the amount of decisions Boone has to make, and on Sunday he only had to make two: who to pitch in the eighth and who to pitch in the ninth. They both worked out because they were rather simple decisions to make. Boone didn’t have to make a multitude of bullpen decisions or use pinch runners or pinch hitters. It was an easy night for the manager, just like Game 1 was, and the Yankees won both games. The less decisions Boone has to make, the more successful the Yankees are. It’s crazy how that works out.

3. In Game 5, Aaron Boone will unfortunately need to make a lot of decisions. Unless Jameson Taillon goes out and pitches a Cole-like gem, Boone is going to have to make at least five pitching changes, and whatever pinch hitting (it would be nice if Matt Carpenter could have an impact on this series) or pinch running (Boone is already itching to run Tim Locastro for Giancarlo Stanton) decisions he makes. This is where the Yankees are at an enormous disadvantage. Terry Francona is a Hall of Fame manager who has a storied history of making a litany of perfect decisions in elimination games. Boone has been a disaster in elimination games, and it’s why the Yankees have eventually been eliminated in all four postseasons he has been Yankees manager for.

4. Boone did say Nestor Cortes is available out of the bullpen in Game 5, and if that’s true, then why not start Cortes? The Yankees need to take an early lead given the Guardians elite relievers have only appeared in one game in the series and Francona will be willing to get multiple innings from all of them. The Yankees can’t afford to give up a run in the first inning when Steven Kwan, Amed Rosario and Jose Ramirez will all bat. Let Cortes face them, and see how long he can go, and then go elsewhere for outs. I think starting Taillon leaves the Yankees vulnerable in the top of the first, and if the Guardians plate a run or more in that inning, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Francona scrap having Aaron Civale take the mound as his “starter” and go right to his elite relievers to blow away the Yankees like they did in Game 2.

5. After 165 games of Yankees baseball in 2022, Boone finally decided to bench Isiah Kiner-Falefa. He had the opportunity to do so at any point during the regular season when Kiner-Falefa posted a .642 OPS and played a sloppy shortstop, but he continued to stay with him, letting the organization’s No. 3 prospect Oswald Peraza waste away on the bench in the final weeks of the regular season despite hitting .306/.404/.429 and playing exceptional defense. It was fitting to hear Ron Darling say during Game 4 that “If you’re on this Guardians team, age doesn’t matter, ability does,” as the Yankees operate under the exact opposite motto. Boone famously referred to Kiner-Falefa as “one of the best shortstops in the game” despite every statistic and the human eye suggesting otherwise. Boone continued to defend Kiner-Falefa’s play to the media and went as far as leaving Peraza off the ALDS roster to avoid a potential shortstop controversy.

6. But he got a shortstop controversy anyway, and he wasn’t able to rectify it by playing Peraza because he left Peraza off the ALDS roster. Kiner-Falefa misplayed the first ball hit to him in the very first inning of the series and went to on to misplay a handful of balls prior to his benching, including two inexplicable “errors” (that were both inexplicably called hits) in Game 3 that single-handedly led to the Yankees allowing two runs, which helped them lose the game. If Peraza or Oswaldo Cabrera or Marwin Gonzalez played shortstop in Game 3, I’m writing about the Yankees’ series-clinching win in Game 4 and preparing for the Astros on the Wednesday. Instead, I’m wasting more words on Kiner-Falefa, the worst everyday player on a championship-caliber team in Yankees history.

7. But Kiner-Falefa is no longer an everyday player. I believe Game 3 was the last time we will see him as the starting shortstop for the New York Yankees. Cabrera played a perfect short in Game 4, made plays on balls Kiner-Falefa would have undoubtedly screwed up, and the Yankees won. Even if the moronic Boone said Cabrera will only “probably” be at shortstop in Game 5, everyone knows he will be. There’s no going back to Kiner-Falefa now (barring injury). It took the Yankees’ season being officially on the line for Boone to finally adjust his lineup by removing Kiner-Falefa from it. Hopefully, it leads to Peraza being on the ALCS roster, if the Yankees get there.

8. If they get there, Harrison Bader will be a big reason why. The Gold Glove center fielder came to the Yankees advertised as all glove bat and no bat, but he now has three home runs in the series after crushing a two-run shot in Game 4. He represents the bottom of the order spark plug the Yankees haven’t had in their lineup in nearly a decade. The type of player the opposition has haunted the Yankees with over the last decade.

9. Boone was extremely concerned about the capsule strain in Clay Holmes’ shoulder on Saturday night, but less than 24 hours later, his concern for Holmes seemed to go out the window as he was willing to go to him to face the top of the Guardians order in the eighth. If Boone stays true to his word that Holmes can’t pitch on back-to-back days, (which is nonsensical) that would mean Holmes is unavailable for Game 5. That is unless Boone stays true to his other word that Holmes is available to pitch back-to-back days if it’s an emergency situation. (Yes, Boone has contradicted himself with how he will handle Holmes.) The ninth inning of Game 3 of a best-of-5 series wasn’t an “emergency situation.” I wonder if Game 5 of a best-of-5 series will qualify as an “emergency situation” for Boone.

10. Game 5 is an “emergency situation” for everyone, just like Game 4 was. One team will spend their Monday night getting doused in champagne before flying to Houston to face the best team in baseball for a chance to go to the World Series. The other team will spend their Monday night answering questions about what went wrong and how they can make sure they aren’t answering the same questions a year from now.

Yankees fans have spent too many of the last 20 years watching their team answer those questions, only to have to endure the same result the following year.

A year ago, after losing the one-game playoff in embarrassing fashion, Boone and Brian Cashman spent their end-of-the-season press conferences in mid-October explaining the changes that would be made to avoid another early exit this season. The Yankees avoided that early exit on Sunday night in Game 4. They will have to do it again on Monday night in Game 5.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees had a two-run lead with one out and no one on in the ninth. They were two outs away from taking a 2-1 series lead in the ALDS. Instead, they will be facing elimination in Game 4.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Stunned. No, I’m not talking about the feeling that overcame me when the Guardians walked off the Yankees 6-5 in Game 3 of the ALDS. I’m talking about the feeling that overcame me as I watched Aaron Boone mismanage the Yankees to yet another postseason loss. I’m talking about the feeling that overcame me as Boone told unbelievable lies in his postgame press conference to try and cover his ass after he single-handedly cost the Yankees the pivotal game and put his team on the brink of elimination for Game 4.

The loss was the first in Yankees postseason history in which they held a multi-run lead entering the ninth inning. They had been 167-0 before Saturday night. It’s yet another historic moment in Yankees history under Boone to go along with the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history which he oversaw in the 2018 ALDS.

2. A day after Boone made it apparent Clarke Schmidt was below Jameson Taillon on the pitching pecking order for the postseason, he changed his mind. In Game 2, Schmidt wasn’t good enough to pitch in a tie game in the 10th inning before Taillon (who had never made a relief appearance in his career), but in Game 3, he was suddenly good enough to enter a game with one out and runners on the corners and the Yankees clinging to a two-run lead.

Schmidt nearly did get out of the impossible situation. With the bases loaded and one out, and the lead down to one run, he struck out Josh Naylor on three pitches. He followed it up by getting ahead of Oscar Gonzalez 1-2 and then threw a really good slider on the outside corner that Gonzalez was able to awkwardly get the bat on and poke up the middle for a two-run, walk-off single.

The Guardians’ high-contact approach produced bloops, grounders and line drives in the ninth, all resulting in the same thing: base hits. They had five singles in the ninth and finished the game with 15 hits to the Yankees’ five. The Yankees sat around and waited for the home run to come, and it did three times, once each by Aaron Judge, Oswaldo Cabrera and Harrison Bader, but nothing else. Just two other hits aside from those three home runs. The Guardians kept putting runners on base, while the Yankees continued to put together mostly feeble at-bats, and eventually the Guardians broke through with their three-run ninth to win the game.

3. Schmidt entered with one out in the ninth in relief of Wandy Peralta, who had entered the game long before in the seventh. Luis Severino was able to grind through 5 2/3 innings despite a rocky first and second inning thanks to some bad luck and some bad infield defense, and then Lou Trivino got one out, Jonathan Loaisiga got two outs and Peralta got five outs before allowing back-to-back singles with one out in the ninth, leading to his dismissal. The ninth should have been Clay Holmes’, but after the game, Boone explained why Holmes didn’t pitch.

Did you have Clay Holmes available?

“No. No. I mean he was down there available.”

Did you know going into the game you didn’t have him?

“It was was more of an emergency situation. Emergency, yeah.”

Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with his arm“

“No, just normal soreness, but nothing we’re alarmed at.”

Boone said Holmes wasn’t available and then immediately backtracked to say he was available. He said Holmes was only available in an “emergency situation,” and apparently the ninth inning of Game 3 of a best-of-5 series doesn’t qualify as an “emergency situation.” He also said Holmes had soreness. But Holmes didn’t have soreness. Because minutes after Boone made his comments to the media, Holmes contradicted everything he said.

“I woke up today preparing to pitch … It’s one of those things where I was preparing to do my job … They asked and I said I was good to go, if needed. That’s how the conversation was.”

Holmes went on to say he feels fine, was surprised he wasn’t used in the ninth, and said he was never told he wouldn’t be used on back-to-back days.

Remember when the Yankees hired Boone solely because of his communication skills? The same communication skills that led to him benching Gary Sanchez in the postseason without an explanation to the player. The same communication skills that told the media he didn’t feel like Domingo German needed to address the team coming back from his domestic violence suspension until Zack Britton made it clear German did need to address the team. The same communication skills that led to him and Holmes sharing completely different accounts of the pitcher’s health to the media. The same communication skills that led to his Game 3 starting pitcher questioning his managerial decisions to the media when asked if about Holmes not being used in the ninth.

“He’s our closer,” Severino said. “So of course I’m surprised.”

4. When Severino was removed from the game because Kiner-Falefa couldn’t make a routine play in the sixth inning to extend that inning, the Yankees’ bullpen needed to get 10 outs. If Boone knew he wasn’t going to use Holmes in the game (except in an undefined “emergency situation”) then why did he only let Lou Trivino get one out and Jonathan Loaisiga get two outs? That left seven outs needed to be recorded with only one reliever left from Boone’s bullpen inner circle: Peralta. So Boone had cornered himself into needing to get seven outs from one reliever, and that’s exactly what he tried to do.

Peralta had pitched 2 1/3 innings (which is what he would be asked to do in Game 3) once in 104 appearances as a Yankee. A day after asking Taillon to do something he has never done in his career, Boone would now ask Peralta to do something he had done once, and when Peralta couldn’t get the final two outs of the game, he turned to Schmidt to do something he had never done before. I can’t believe this well-thought-out bullpen plan didn’t work out.

5. The bullpen wasn’t the only mess Boone created. After the Yankees went scoreless for the final nine innings in Game 2, he decided to change the lineup for Game 3. It’s bad enough Gleyber Torres has been batting third for the Yankees, but Boone decided to move him to the leadoff spot, pushing Judge down to the 2-hole. This moved Rizzo from 2 to 3, but kept Stanton at 4. He left Donaldson at 5 because it’s 2015. At 6, he decided to put Isiah Kiner-Falefa and his .642 OPS. He moved Harrison Bader up from 9 to 7, started Kyle Higashioka and had him at 8 over Jose Trevino and moved Oswaldo Cabrera down to 9. (Yes, Higashioka was once again starting a postseason game for the Yankees over an All-Star catcher, and this All-Star catcher just happens to the best defensive catcher in the majors.)

Torres swung at the first pitch of the game and grounded out, completely negating his role as the leadoff hitter, essentially making Judge the leadoff hitter with one less out to work with in the first inning. Torres finished the game 0-for-4. Boone’s new-look 3-4-5-6 of Rizzo, Stanton, Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa combined to go 0-for-15 with a walkm, and Higashioka went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts and a walk. It turns out that rearranging the names of a collective group of mostly bad hitters doesn’t magically generate offense. Who could have known?

6. While Donaldson, Kiner-Falefa and Higashioka were allowed to get a full slate of plate appearances, Matt Carpenter went unused for the entire game for the second time in three games. Boone is purposely not using the team’s second-best hitter, choosing instead to believe in Donaldson as if it’s 2015, believe in Kiner-Falefa as if he’s ever been good and let Higashioka play a complete game for unknown reasons.

Carpenter wasn’t the only the player on the bench who should have played and didn’t. Cabrera was left in left field in the ninth inning despite having Aaron Hicks and Tim Locastro on the bench. And for the second time in as many days, Cabrera let a ball fall in front of him that a more experienced and veteran left fielder would have likely gotten to.

7. Kiner-Falefa’s inability to handle a double play ball in the first inning allowed a run to score and forced Severino to throw 15 more pitches. In the sixth with two outs, when Kiner-Falefa triple clutched before wildly throwing a routine ground ball wide of first, he caused the inning to be extended in which the Guardians sent three more batters to the plate and scored a run.

Kiner-Falefa is the worst everyday player in Yankees history on a team expected to win the World Series. He can’t hit and he can’t field, and yet, he has maintained his everyday playing status despite all of this to the point that Oswald Peraza isn’t even on the ALDS roster. When asked about Kiner-Falefa’s two “errors” in the game (which were both scored hits as the official scorer in Cleveland is a relative of Kiner-Falefa), Boone defended the player he earlier this season called “one of the best shortstops in the game.”

8. While the Yankees were trying to grind out a win to take a 2-1 series lead, the Astros were sweeping the Mariners in their ALDS. The Astros will now have three full days off before Game 1 of the ALCS on Wednesday in Houston. They will be able to set up their rotation how they want it and give extended rest to their bullpen. The Yankees will need to exhaust every pitching option over the next two days just to get to the ALCS. They will then not have Gerrit Cole until Game 3 and likely not have Nestor Cortes early on either if he’s going to appear in a potential Game 5. Their bullpen is already fatigued and now their rotation will be a mess. It was unlikely they were going to beat Cleveland if they had everything set up exactly how they wanted. Now with this mess they have created? They might be better off letting the Guardians go get embarrassed by the best team in baseball. I would rather not watch the Yankees be eliminated by the Astros for fourth time in the last eight years.

9. The Yankees needed to win the 1-seed in the American League to beat the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup. They failed to do that. Then they needed to sweep the Guardians to have a chance to beat the Astros in a potential ALCS matchup. Then they needed to beat the Guardians in four games to have a prayer to beat the Astros in the ALCS. Now? Now they’re screwed for the ALCS if they are somehow able to get there.

If the Yankees reach the ALCS, Boone will undoubtedly be back for 2023. He will likely be back for 2023 regardless of what happens on Sunday or Monday. But if an ALDS loss means the end of Boone, knowing how little chance the Yankees have of getting past the Astros in the ALCS, it’s hard not to think that is better for the future of the franchise. Boone was already allowed to ruin this core’s window of opportunity. Does any Yankees fan really want him overseeing and ruining the next expected Yankees core of Cabrera, Peraza, Anthony Volpe and Jasson Dominguez? I don’t.

10. I do think the Yankees will win Game 4 and force a Game 5, but I don’t know how they will win Game 5 without an available starter and with their bullpen already fatigued after just three games. After the relatively easy Game 1 win in this series, it’s hard to believe the Yankees could be in this position, but I learned four Octobers ago that as long as Boone is the manager of the Yankees, you need to prepare for and expect the worst in the postseason.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees blew a two-run lead at home in Game 2 of the ALDS and now go to Cleveland for Games 3 and 4, having given away home-field advantage.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I left Yankee Stadium just before midnight on Oct. 3, 2006 as River Ave. filled with chants of “SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP!” The Yankees had cruised to an 8-4 win in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Tigers, backed by a 5-for-5, two-double, two-home run night from Derek Jeter and a two-run home run from Jason Giambi, and the 56,291 at the Stadium were pouring onto the street making it known how they thought the best-of-5 series would go.

The Yankees had won 97 games, easily winning the AL East by 10 games. Their offense was so ridiculous and overflowing with talent that defending AL MVP Alex Rodriguez was batting sixth, Robinson Cano hit .342 in the regular season and was batting ninth and Gary Sheffield had to learn how to play first base to get in the lineup. Their lineup for that Game 1 win:

Johnny Damon, CF
Derek Jeter, SS
Bobby Abreu, RF
Gary Sheffield, 1B
Jason Giambi, DH,
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Hideki Matsui, LF
Jorge Posada, C
Robinson Cano, 2B

Unfortunately, Mother Nature didn’t cooperate after Game 1, and the following night Game 2 was rained out and moved to 1:00 the next afternoon, changing the entire series.

In that day game, a rookie named Justin Verlander made his postseason debut, going 5 1/3 innings and allowing three earned runs. The Yankees had a two-run lead that Joe Torre let Mike Mussina blow and then some, and with the Yankees trailing by a run and the October shadows moving slowly over home plate, Joel Zumaya entered and struck out three of the four hitters he faced in the seventh and eighth with fastballs reaching 103 mph. The Yankees went to Detroit with the series tied at 1 and didn’t play another game at the Stadium that season.

2. It was the memory of that game that had me pacing around on Thursday waiting to see if Game 2 of this season’s ALDS would be moved because of rain. Sure enough, it was.

The postponement would mean yet another day off for the Yankees who had played one game in the last seven days and hadn’t played a meaningful game prior to Game 1 in weeks. It meant losing Nestor Cortes as a starting option in a potential Game 5. It meant losing the nighttime postseason atmosphere of Yankee Stadium. It meant a weekday afternoon crowd at Yankee Stadium. It meant the October shadows would come into play against the dominant Cleveland bullpen. It meant nothing good for the Yankees.

And it proved out to be nothing good for the Yankees. Just like they blew a two-run lead 16 years prior in Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS at home, they blew a two-run lead in Game 2 on Friday at home. After plating two in the first on a missed ball 4 call to Giancarlo Stanton that resulted in a two-run porch shot, the Yankees never scored again. Zero runs over the final nine innings of the game.

The shadows I feared accentuated the Yankees’ inability to make contact as they struck out for 15 of their 30 outs to the Guardians’ eight. The annual postseason disappearing act from the Yankees’ offense has become as much a part of October as pumpkin spice and it presented itself in Game 1.

3. But the offense wasn’t the only problem. Cortes was off for one of the only times in 2022, putting nine baserunners on in five innings. And Aaron Boone (like he has been most days as Yankees manager and has been in every postseason as Yankees manager) was at his absolute worst.

Boone’s issues started when he filled out the lineup card for Game 2. Left out of the lineup was Marwin Gonzalez. Now I don’t think Gonzalez should even be a Yankee and should have been released for other options long ago, but he is a Yankee, and he is on the ALDS roster, and if he’s not going to start a game against a starter he’s 7-for-14 with two doubles, a home run and a walk against like he is against Shane Bieber, then what’s the point of him being on the roster? Boone went with the same nine as Game 1, only flipping Oswaldo Cabrera and Josh Donaldson in the 5- and 6-holes.

When it was obvious Cortes wasn’t going to be able to pitch into the seventh inning like Gerrit Cole did in Game 1, it meant Boone would have to make several important in-game decisions in what was a 2-2 game, and the odds of Boone making a handful of successful game-changing moves would be the same as you writing five random numbers between 1 and 100 on a piece of paper and me being able to correctly guess all five in five guesses.

The first decision Boone had to make was whether or not to let Cortes pitch the sixth. He chose not to after Cortes allowed a game-tying home run in the fifth. Boone brought in Lou Trivino and after Trivino allowed a baserunner and recorded two outs, he went to Jonathan Loaisiga who ended the inning. I would have stayed with Cortes for at another inning, but Boone’s two decisions had worked in keeping the Guardians off the board, even if he had already turned to two of his best bullpen arms needing at least three more innings of outs from a depleted and untrustworthy group.

In the bottom of the sixth, with two on and two out, Boone pinch hit for Jose Trevino with Matt Carpenter. The Yankees’ second-best hitter was finally getting an at-bat 15 innings into the series. It was a good time to use Carpenter. The problem is that Carpenter should be starting every game. Force him into a position or tell Giancarlo Stanton enough is enough and it’s time to grab a glove and play the outfield. Carpenter can’t be getting one plate appearance a game. And when Carpenter only gets one plate appearance, it means removing the Yankees’ best catcher and the best defensive catcher in baseball and having to play Kyle Higashioka for the remainder of the game. In this game, it meant four-plus innings of Higashioka. Carpenter struck out to end the inning in his first plate appearance in more than seven weeks.

Boone continued to make quick hooks with his relievers, and while I understand the series would play up to four games in four days, the unwillingness to win the game at hand in the present was startling. Boone removed Trivino after 17 pitches despite having thrown 12 pitches in the previous 17 days. He pulled Loaisiga after 15 pitches. Wandy Peralta’s day was called after 15 pitches as well, and Clay Holmes after 16.

In the bottom of the eighth, after Stanton walked with one out, Boone pulled him for a pinch runner in Tim Locastro. Locastro successfully stole second, but you just knew removing Stanton from the game would come back to haunt the Yankees as that move never works out when Boone makes it. And there was Stanton’s spot in the order leading off the 10th inning in what was then a 4-2 Guardians lead. And there was Boone letting Locastro hit for himself against arguably the best reliever in the majors, choosing to not use Gonzalez or Aaron Hicks as pinch hitters. Again, if either of them aren’t going to be used to bat over Locastro (who is on the roster to run and only run) then what is their purpose? The Yankees purposely left their best all-around shortstop off the ALDS roster in favor Gonzalez and Hicks, and neither of them are playing in situations where they should be playing.

The reason the Yankees were trailing when Stanton’s spot came up in the 10th was because Boone had pulled Trivino, Loaisiga, Peralta and Holmes early, and decided to pitch Jameson Taillon in relief for the first time in his career in the first extra inning. After Taillon was unable to get an out on 18 pitches, Boone then went to Clarke Schmidt, a starter by trade, who has mostly relieved at the major-league level and done an excellent job in relief. The Yankees were down two runs when Schmidt came in as Boone was willing to use him while trailing by two runs and not with the game tied.

Sometimes I think I have seen it all from Boone. His Game 3 and Game 4 pitching decisions in the 2018 ALDS. His relief choices in the 2019 ALCS. His Deivi Garcia-J.A. Happ move in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS. How long he went with Cole and each subsequent pitcher in the 2021 one-game playoff. All of his lineups over the years. His infatuation with trying to steal outs in important moments. But I haven’t. Taillon making the first relief apperance of his career in the 10th inning of a postseason game and not out of necessity and playing without Giancarlo Stanton, Matt Carpenter and Jose Trevino for a good portion of a postseason game, while Locastro faced Clase is the type of work only one manager in the majors is capable of.

As long as he is the manager of the Yankees, there will continue to be days like Friday. But if the Yankees lose two more games before they win two more, I truly don’t think he will be the manager of the Yankees anymore.

4. You could say the Yankees’ issue in Game 2 was simply not scoring after the first inning, and you would be right. But the Yankees are going to have to win low-scoring games to win a championship, and not every game will be as easy and as Boone-free as Game 1 was. And there was no bigger offensive problem in Game 2 than Aaron Judge.

I gave everyone a clean slate for the postseason, and that means both good and bad. Judge’s slate was wiped clean. I don’t care what type of regular season he had. I don’t care that he’s about to cash in on generational wealth. I don’t care that he broke the American League home run record. None of that matters to me in terms of the Yankees winning in October and none of his regular-season accomplishments matter in October. His all-time regular season has now become an all-time bad postseason through two games. The type of postseason I thought only Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher could produce.

Judge struck out four times in Game 2 after striking out three times in Game 1. He has put the ball in play in one of his eight postseason at-bats with the other seven resulting in strikeouts. He’s now 2-for-37 with 27 strikeouts in his postseason career against the Guardians. Impossibly bad.

5. He’s not the only one, though he’s the most important one. Oswaldo Cabrera continues to bat in the middle of the lineup, while Carpenter sits on the bench, despite Cabrera being overmatched by postseason pitching. There are no more No. 4 and 5 starters to see. There are no more middle relievers and last and second-to-last relievers throwing pitches. The Yankees are seeing front-end starters and All-Star-caliber relievers and will continue to see only those types of arms, especially in the kind of low-scoring games the Guardians play. Through two games, Cabrera looks like a kid with less than two months of major-league time, swinging through every high fastball at his eyes.

6. Here are some of the 3-hitters left in the postseason:

Gleyber Torres
Jose Ramirez
Yordan Alvarez
Freddie Freeman
Manny Machado

One of those names is unlike the others. Torres.

Torres batting third for the Yankees has always been a joke. Even without Carpenter, DJ LeMahieu and Andrew Benintendi. He had the lowest OPS in all of baseball for a full month this season and outside of a few random hot streaks, was pretty much as bad as he was in 2020 and 2021. Having him bat third is a disgrace, and if Stanton isn’t batting third in Game 3, there is no hope for the Yankees.

Torres’ Baseball IQ and lack of awareness played a role in the Guardians scoring their first run when he threw the ball as hard as possible to Anthony Rizzo from a short distance when he had much more time with Josh Naylor running down the line. Then in the ninth, Torres swung at the first pitch of his at-bat against Emmanuel Clase, grounding out and ensuring Clase would return for the 10th.

7. I didn’t think Judge forgetting how to hit and Rizzo forgetting how to play defense would be two things I would see and have to worry about in the playoffs, but here we are.

8. Josh Donaldson filled his quota of one moronic play per game on Friday, throwing away the ball on Jose Ramirez’s bloop hit in the 10th. In Game 1, it was Donaldson going into his home run trot on a ball that hit the right-field wall, leading to him getting thrown out on the bases. His throw was foolish and unnecessary and rather than have Ramirez on second with no outs to lead off the 10th, he was on third with no outs to lead off the 10th. I can’t wait until Donaldson is no longer a Yankee.

9. Seeing Anthony Volpe in the stands attending the game as a spectator with Peraza left off the roster, so Kiner-Falefa can continue to be the team’s starting shortstop summed up the Yankees under the current management as well as the actual result on the field of Game 2.

10. The Yankees are in trouble. No, they’re not turning to a washed-up Randy Johnson in Game 3 or begrudgingly giving the ball to Jaret Wright in Game 4. But they are going on the road having given away home-field advantage, have no pitching advantage in Game 3, will need to now use Cole again in this series rather than have him lined up for Game 1 of the ALCS, and don’t have a starter for Game 5.

Friday’s Game 2 loss was a bad one. I knew the Yankees would eventually lose a game in the postseason, but losing the way they did in Game 2 was hard to stomach. And now they’re in a bad spot. Not as bad a spot as they were 16 years ago, but not far from it either. This series is now guaranteed to go at least four games, and if the Yankees are able to survive and advance to the ALCS, the extremely difficult task of trying to upset the Astros just got that much harder with Cole being unable to go until Game 3 of the next round. Most importantly, for now, the task of eliminating the Guardians just got that much harder.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees needed to win Game 1 of the ALDS against the Guardians with Gerrit Cole on the mound against Cal Quantrill. They did just that.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. As I do every postseason, I gave everyone on the Yankees a clean slate, including Aaron Boone. But in doing so, I figured Boone would muddy his slate as soon as he the Game 1 lineup was announced, which he did. He actually muddied it late the night before when he admittedly stayed at the Stadium on Monday night trying to decide between Oswald Peraza or Marwin Gonzalez on the ALDS roster. He went with the veteran because of course he did, and decided to leave the Yankees’ best shortstop option off the roster.

I predicted this would be the Game 1 lineup:

Aaron Judge, RF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Josh Donaldson, 3B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Oswaldo Cabrera, LF
Harrison Bader, CF
Isiah Kiner-Falefa, SS
Jose Trevino, C

This was the actual Game 1 lineup:

Aaron Judge, RF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Oswaldo Cabrera, LF
Josh Donaldson, 3B
Isiah Kiner-Falefa, SS
Jose Trevino, C
Harrison Bader, CF

It was close, but Boone did the right thing in batting Giancarlo Stanton ahead of Josh Donaldson. (Stanton should be batting behind Anthony Rizzo as Gleyber Torres serves no protection for anyone.)

2. Boone didn’t do the right thing in playing Isiah Kiner-Falefa. I have spent an inordinate amount of time in 2022 writing and talking about how bad Kiner-Falefa is at baseball, all while Boone has continued to preach how good Kiner-Falefa is as if statistics don’t exist, and at times as if eyesight doesn’t exist. Kiner-Falefa did what he does best in Game 1, booting a ground ball in the first inning, grounding into a double play in his first at-bat and mistiming his jump on a line drive later in the game. He even lined into a second double play in his final at-bat for good measure.

Kiner-Falefa did pick up an opposite-field base hit his second time up that was misplayed and mishandled allowing him to go to third before scoring on a Jose Trevino sacrifice fly. But that one base hit doesn’t erase all the bad he provided in the game, for which there was a lot. It’s one thing to give extra outs to the weak Guardians lineup. If the Yankees are able to advance, and they play the Astros, it will be extremely difficult to beat them as is, let alone if they are playing with more than three outs in an inning.

3. Boone didn’t start Matt Carpenter, choosing to not play the Yankees’ version of Barry Bonds. This has nothing to do with Carpenter having not played in some time, and everything to do with the Yankees not wanting to play Stanton in the outfield, taking the DH possibility away from Carpenter. The Yankees don’t want to play Stanton in the outfield, and they don’t want to play Carpenter in the field, so that means the team’s second-best hitter is relegated to pinch hitting in the postseason. Not great.

4. Gerrit Cole’s night didn’t start out great. He had to pitch around Kiner-Falefa’s error in the first and threw 24 pitches. In the second, he allowed a one-out double, but was able to strike out the Guardians’ 7- and 8-hitters. In the third, he allowed a solo home run to Steven Kwan (who rarely homers) then hit Amed Rosario and gave up a one-out double to Jose Ramirez. After an Anthony Rizzo brain fart resulted in Josh Naylor reaching on a fielder’s choice, the Guardians had the bases loaded with one out. Thankfully, Cole got out of the jam.

Cole needed 25 pitches to navigate through the one-run third and was at 62 pitches through three innings. He was having his typical start with a lot of pitches (the 62 to get six nine outs), a home run (the solo shot by Kwan) and a lot of strikeouts (he had five in the first three innings). But after getting out of the bases-loaded, one-out jam, he settled down, allowing just a walk and a single off Kiner-Falefa’s glove for the rest of his night.

It was a good start from Cole. A much-needed start from Cole. He couldn’t go out and get lit up the way he had for a while, and couldn’t lay an egg at home against a Guardians team that doesn’t hit home runs and just scored three runs in 23-plus innings against the Rays in the wild-card series. He did his job and did it well.

5. All Harrison Bader has done since becoming a Yankee is do his job well. He has played the expected outstanding defense, but the bat that was an enormous worry has been exceptional, especially at the right time. The Yankees have missed the bottom-of-the-order guy who can provide a big hit at the right time (like Scott Brosius or a young Robinson Cano before he became a middle-of-the-order presence), and in his first postseason plate appearance as a Yankee, Bader tied the game with a solo home run off Quantrill in the third. Bader doesn’t belong hitting ninth in the lineup, but given all of the other lineup construction issues Boone has, batting Bader isn’t even the Top 10 problems. Because the Yankees won, the superstitious Boone will undoubtedly run the same lineup out there for Game 2.

6. I understand I’m in the minority of Yankees fans who obsess over the lineup, and as long as the Yankees win, like they did in Game 1, it won’t be discussed the way it should be. And it should be discussed because every aspect of the team should be optimized to the best of its possible ability. The organization employs strength trainers, mental trainers, nutritionists, sleep consultants and everyone and anyone who may help the players perform even the slightest bit better than they are capable. Yet something as important as lineup construction is just glossed over by the front office, manager and mainstream media. I don’t get it. At some point the Yankees won’t win with relative ease (like they did in Game 1) and may not win at all, and the lineup and order of batters will become a focal point of the postseason. It may not happen this series, but if the Yankees advance, you bet it will happen in the ALCS.

7. Overall, Boone had a solid night because he didn’t have to do much. He got a 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball from his starter and then asked his three best available relievers to get the final eight outs, which they did. Those are the kinds of games the Yankees need to have if they want to end their championship drought: games in which Boone isn’t involved once the game starts.

8. Anthony Rizzo’s two-run home run put the game away. I have never felt so comfortable with only a three-run lead in a postseason game, but as I sat in my seat at the Stadium on Tuesday night, once the Yankees took their first lead on the Trevino sac fly, it felt like the game was over. Cole had found his groove, the Guardians only mustered one mediocre rally against Jonathan Loaisiga that Loaisiga ended with a double play, and even knowing that the bullpen would have to get eight outs, I wasn’t worried after the 1-0 deficit became a 2-1 lead.

9. That’s the way it should be for the Yankees against the Guardians. Even with an inconsistent and depleted bullpen depleted, and even with DJ LeMahieu and Andrew Benintendi injured, and even with Carpenter on the bench, and even with the Yankees’ best shortstop not on the ALDS roster, the Yankees and Yankees fans shouldn’t be worried about the Guardians. They reached the postseason by being the best team from the worst division, and swept their wild-card series despite scoring a run every eight innings in it, as they have now scored four runs in 30-plus postseason innings, all via the home run.

10. Things can change. Nestor Cortes could be off in Game 2, or the offense could perform one of its disappearing acts against Shane Bieber. The same could happen when Luis Severino takes the mound in Game 3, or if Cole has to start again in this series. But things shouldn’t change in this series. The Yankees were better than the Guardians for six months. They were better than them when they played them head-to-head in the regular season, and they were better than them again in Game 1 with a less-than-perfect roster and lineup. I don’t expect that to change. I expect the Yankees to be playing baseball next week. I have always expected that. All Game 1 did was reinforce my expectations.

One down, 10 to go.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!