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.

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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.

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