Two pitches into Game 5, James Paxton couldn’t field his position and George Springer was on first base. Two pitches later, Gary Sanchez produced a passed ball and Springer moved to second. One pitch later, Paxton fell behind Jose Altuve 3-0 and with Springer in scoring position I began to wonder why I was even watching this game. After an Altuve groundout, a Michael Brantley walk and a Paxton wild pitch to score Springer, it felt like the Yankees’ season was going to end with another dismal performance, a day after they turned in their most dismal performance of 2019.

But then things changed. Alex Bregman rocketed a 3-2 pitch line drive that Brett Gardner ran down and Yuli Gurriel followed with a high exit-velocity line drive of his own right at Aaron Hicks. The Astros had a 1-0 lead, but it could have been much more, and it felt like maybe this game would be the game things would go the Yankees’ way.

Things were only going to go the Yankees’ way if the offense allowed them to. With six runs over the last three games and 29 innings, including just four runs scored in 18 home innings, either the Yankees’ offense was going to wake up and save the season and extend it at least one more game, or the season was going to end with yet another ALCS offensive letdown, the fourth since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance a decade ago.

DJ LeMahieu opened the bottom of the first with a leadoff home run, proving once again why he’s this team’s MVP even if he won’t be the league MVP. The Yankees’ first baseman/second baseman/third baseman provided a rare single-hit game, but his one hit tied the game, got the Stadium going and ignited a first-inning rally. LeMahieu is now hitting an absurd .343/.410/.600 in the postseason and it’s unbelievable that six months ago, not only was he not batting leadoff, but he wasn’t expected to be an everyday player on this team without injuries.

Aaron Judge stroked a line drive to left field and Gleyber Torres — the rightful 3-hitter — banged a double to left. After going 4-for-10 with a double, home run and 5 RBIs in the first two games of this series batting third, Torres was inexplicably moved down to fifth in the lineup for Game 3 and fourth for Game 4. Aaron Boone cited the desire to break up the right-handed bats, which for some reason didn’t need breaking up in the first two games of the series and didn’t need breaking up in an elimination Game 5. The reasoning never made any sense and proved to only be more ridiculous than ever with the first inning the Yankees put together on Friday night.

Giancarlo Stanton, who was magically healthy for an elimination game, struck out, leaving both runners at their respective bases. Stanton reportedly went in Boone’s office after the crushing Game 4 loss and said “Let’s go” to the manager, which is puzzling since he wasn’t able to play in Game 4, but immediately after the game, he was suddenly healed and ready to play. Stanton finished the game 0-for-3 with two strikeouts, which is understandable, considering he hadn’t played in six days and was facing Justin Verlander.

Verlander had thrown 15 pitches and recorded only one out, but he had made it through the first four batters of the lineup, and coming up he had Hicks, with 13 plate appearances to his name since August 3, and then four slumping hitters, each with an OPS that looked like it was missing the slugging percentage part of the stat. After Stanton struck out it wasn’t unreasonable to think the Yankees would strand both Judge and Torres, fail to take the lead and miss possibly the only opportunity they would get against Verlander for the rest of the game.

Twelve days ago, Hicks watched the Yankees clinch the ALDS from a restaurant in St. Petersburg. His season had been deemed over weeks before and with Tommy John surgery in the plans, he would miss at least one-third of next season as well. But Hicks was able to rehab his way back into the postseason conversation and show enough to earn a roster spot for the ALCS. After the offense disappeared following Game 1, Hicks became a middle-of-the-order bat, putting together lengthy at-bats and working impressive walks in the series. He quickly fell behind Verlander 0-2 and the percentage of the Yankees getting in even one of the two runs drastically declined. Hicks worked the count back to even and then full, and then Verlander made a rare mistake, hanging a breaking ball, a textbook cement mixer thrown middle-middle. Hicks crushed the pitch, and if it was fair, it was gone as it approached the right-field seats and began hooking toward foul territory. Just before it could finish its turn to the right of the foul pole to deflate the Stadium and Tri-state area, it clanged off the pole to give the Yankees a 4-1 lead.

Thankfully, the ball stayed fair, and thankfully, the Yankees were able to get four first-inning runs because that’s all they would get the for the rest of the game. Verlander would go on to retire 20 of the next 21 hitters, finishing with seven innings to give every Astros reliever except for Brad Peacock the night off with a bullpen vs. bullpen game scheduled for Game 6.

Despite his latest first-inning struggles, Paxton put together his best start as a Yankee, rising to the occasion and making up for his 2 1/3-innings start in Game 2. The left-hander who the Yankees acquired solely for starts like Game 5, and who, before the season spoke about wanting to be a Yankee and wanting to pitch in the postseason with the expectations of winning a championship delivered with elimination on the line. With nine strikeouts against a team that doesn’t strike out and a Yankees season-high 112 pitches, Paxton protected the first-inning, three-run lead through his final five innings of work.

For the first time since Judge’s Game 2 home run off Verlander, the Yankees got a timely, game-changing hit. After leaving the bases loaded in the first inning of both Games 3 and 4, the Yankees didn’t leave anyone on in the first inning of Game 5. It wasn’t just the LeMahieu/Judge/Torres show as Hicks had the big hit, but it was still the top-half-of-the-order show in Game 5 as the Yankees’ 1 through 5 hitters went 4-for-14 with a double, two home runs and 4 RBIs, while the 6 through 9 hitters went 1-for-12 with five strikeouts. At some point you would think at least one of Gary Sanchez, Didi Gregorius, Gio Urshela or Gardner would snap out of it and begin to contribute. I’m not asking for all four to hit, I’m only asking for one, maybe even two? With Game 6 also an elimination game for the Yankees, and a potential winner-take-all Game 7 if the Yankees can win Game 6, there’s not much time for the bottom four hitters to prove they’re not the near-automatic outs they have been for the first five games of the ALCS.

The Yankees were able to beat Verlander in a postseason game for the first time in franchise history to send the series back to Houston, where they won Game 1 and had plenty of chances to also win Game 2. They won’t face Verlander or Gerrit Cole in Game 6, and they won’t face a starting pitcher at all. It will be a bullpen game for both teams, and while the Yankees have the stronger bullpen, theirs has been used and overworked in the series. I’m not sure how the Yankees plan to navigate through an elimination game with Chad Green running on close to empty, Adam Ottavino being completely untrustworthy, Tommy Kahnle showing signs of fatigue, Zack Britton having thrown 18 pitches in Game 5 and knowing the potential disaster of asking Aroldis Chapman to pitch more than one inning. There’s a good chance Green will open Game 6 and then turn the ball over to J.A. Happ, which should make any Yankees feel about as comfortable as they would riding the 4 train from Midtown to the Stadium during rush hour before a postseason game. Not only can you expect to see multiple innings from Happ, but you can probably expect Luis Cessa and/or Tyler Lyons to make an appearance in Saturday’s must-win game as well.

The Game 5 win extended the Yankees’ season at least one more game and gave us Yankees baseball for at least one more night. It was always going to be an uphill battle to win the pennant against this Astros team, and once the Yankees lost Game 4 to go down 3-1 in the series, needing to win three games in three days against a 107-win team and needing to beat both Verlander and Cole to win the series was going to be nearly impossible. Winning Game 5 against Verlander and sending the series back to Houston has made it a little more possible.

Five down, six to go.

***

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

The Yankees entered Game 4 knowing it was as must-win as a non-elimination game could be. Wednesday’s rainout meant four games in four days if the series went the distance. It meant overextending the bullpen if the starting pitching couldn’t give length. It meant needing to win three straight against the best team in baseball. It meant winning games started by Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole and another game on top of that. It meant needing to win Game 4.

The Yankees didn’t win Game 4. They didn’t come close. Instead, they turned in another humiliating offensive performance, a poor starting pitching effort, a bullpen meltdown and a defensive disaster. The offense left nine more runners on base, bringing their four-game total to 34. Masahiro Tanaka was only able to go five innings, giving up four runs and three earned runs. Chad Green finally couldn’t get out of a jam, allowing a three-run home run, after now having appeared in every game of the series. DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres combined for four errors, two each, to become the first right side of an infield to have four errors in a postseason game in history.

For the second straight game, the Yankees had a chance to do significant damage in the first inning and failed to. With the bases loaded against Zack Greinke and the future Hall of Famer unable to throw a strike, the Yankees were only able to plate one run on a bases-loaded walk from Brett Gardner. The Yankees finished the inning leaving the bases loaded in what has been a never-ending theme with the team not just in this series, but in every ALCS they have played in since their last World Series appearance in 2009.

In the 2010 ALCS against the Rangers, the Yankees scored six total runs in Games 2, 3, 4 and 6.

In the 2012 ALCS against the Tigers, the Yankees scored six total runs in the four-game loss.

In the 2017 ALCS against these same Astros, the Yankees scored three total runs in the four road games.

This is why my No. 1 fear for the postseason wasn’t the starting pitching (though that has been just about as bad as expected) and it wasn’t even so much Aaron Boone managing the team to losses like he did in last year’s postseason. It was the offense performing its annual October disappearing act, and my biggest fear has come true yet again.

The Yankees’ lineup is built for regular-season success. It’s built to mash No. 4 and 5 starters and bad bullpens over 162 games. But when it’s faced with elite starting pitchers and high-end relievers on a nightly basis, it looks as bad as it has for the last three games. Since Game 2, the Yankees have scored six runs in 29 innings and four runs in 18 home innings. I worried a lot all season about the team needing home-field advantage to beat the Astros, but they had home-field advantage in the series after winning Game 1 and it hasn’t mattered. Maybe there’s just no beating these Astros for these Yankees, home-field advantage or not.

The numbers are ugly in this series for nearly everyone in the lineup.

Aaron Judge is batting .235/.316/.412.
Edwin Encarnacion is batting .067/.222/.133.
Brett Gardner is batting .133/.235/.133.
Gary Sanchez is batting .118/.118/.294.
Gio Urshela is batting .133/.188/.333.
Didi Gregorius is batting .125/.125/.125.

(Giancarlo Stanton, who continues to be “available” but not play and Aaron Hicks who bats third with 10 plate appearances since August 3 were omitted.)

Aside from DJ LeMehaieu (.412/.500/.471) and Gleyber Torres (.294/.368/.706), no one is consistently contributing. While the Astros get timely hits and game-changing at-bats from different parts of their lineup each game, the Yankees are playing with a two-batter (LeMahieu and Torres), maybe two-and-a-half-batter (Judge) lineup each game. The bottom two-thirds of the lineup have been automatic outs, and the Yankees’ season might only have one game left because of it.

There will be plenty of time to talk about the Yankees’ decision not to upgrade their starting pitching through free agency or trades and going with the strategy of needing 12-plus outs from their bullpen each postseason game if they don’t win three straight and don’t advance to the World Series. For now, everything is about the offense ending its three-game slump and sending the series back to Houston.

In order to win this series, the Yankees will have to win a postseason game started by Justin Verlander, which is something the franchise has never done unless you count the weird one-inning suspended game in the 2011 ALDS, which shouldn’t be counted since the game was tied at the time of suspension. They lost Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS. They lost Game 3 of the 2011 ALDS. They lost Game 3 of the 2012 ALCS. They lost Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. They lost Game 6 of the 2017 ALCS. They lost Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. Then if they win a game started by Verlander for the first time ever, they will go to back to Houston where the Astros are historically good to face Jose Urquidy and/or the Astros’ bullpen in Game 6. If they’re able to also win that game, they will have to win another game in Houston against the best pitcher in the world this season in Gerrit Cole.

The Yankees had their chances to beat Verlander and the bullpen to win Game 2. They had their chances to beat Cole and win Game 3. They could have had at worst a 2-1 series lead or at best a 3-0 series lead before Thursday’s night debacle. Instead, they trailed 2-1 entering Game 4 and now trail 3-1 entering Game 5 because the Astros have capitalized on every opportunity since Game 1 and the Yankees haven’t.

It’s going to take a miracle for the Yankees to win this series. Three wins in three consecutive days against the best team in baseball with two of those wins needing to come against the two best pitchers in the American League and two of those wins needing to come on the road against the best home team in baseball.

The Yankees are on the brink of elimination and will remain there for as long as this series goes. If the Yankees play the way they have the last three games, the series won’t go past tonight.

***

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

Trailing by one run in the bottom of the first inning in Game 3, DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge both reached on back-to-back singles. Then Brett Gardner came up instead of Gleyber Torres and the Yankees lost the game right then.

Despite the 22-year-old’s budding superstar status, his historical regular season and his performance in the ALDS, for which I gave him the ALDS MVP, Torres batted fifth in Game 5. Aaron Boone and the analytics department, or whoever creates the lineup, finally rewarded him after two seasons of production by batting him third in Games 1 and 2 in Houston, and he went 4-for-10 with a double, home run and five RBIs. But for Game 3, Torres was back batting fifth, with Gardner inexplicably batting third. Boone was asked about this egregious decision after the game, and here was his answer:

“I mean, I was just, we had a few more lefties, so spacing our lefties out. Lineup-wise, we switch it a lot based on who we have in there. With Hicks being in there and having a third lefty, just kind of getting some spacing within our lineup is all. I actually think Gleyber hit sixth the first game if I’m not mistaken.”

That answer answered nothing. Boone fumbled around his words with a combination of “I mean” and “you know” and “um” as he searched for a BS answer he could pass off as acceptable. But nothing about the decision to bat Torres fifth was acceptable, and nothing was analytical, reasonable or logical. And Boone was mistaken, Torres batted third in the first and second games of the series, not sixth.

When facing Gerrit Cole, you might only get one chance to get to him. The Yankees ended up getting multiple chances, failing in every single one of them, but the first inning ended up being their best chance of the game. Instead of facing the red-hot Torres (oh I forgot, the Yankees don’t believe in every being hot or cold), Cole retired Gardner on two pitches and slumping Edwin Encarnacion on one pitch. Torres walked against the eventual Cy Young winner with two outs and then the also-slumping Didi Gregorius ended the inning, swinging at the first pitch of his at-bat after four straight balls to Torres.

Against Cole, Torres walked on four pitches, struck out swinging in a nine-pitch battle and walked on eight pitches, as all three of his at-bats came with two outs. Once Cole was out of the game, Torres hit a home run, his second of the series and third of the postseason against the submarine-throwing, right-handed specialist Joe Smith. So the only time in the game Torres was retired was when he lost that nine-pitch at-bat to Cole, which ended in a strikeout to the pitcher with the most strikeouts in the game since Randy Johnson in 2002.

While the decision to move Torres down in the order for no reason was the most egregious of the game, it wasn’t the only thing that led to a Yankees’ loss. Luis Severino labored through yet another postseason start, and after throwing four scoreless innings against the Twins and having to get out of multiple jams to do, he once again found himself pitching out of the stretch in four of the five innings he pitched in on Tuesday. Severino allowed to long solo home runs to Jose Altuve and Josh Reddick and put eight baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings. Unfortunately, the slumping offense and Cole were too much for the Yankees to overcome the early hole Severino put them in.

Adam Ottavino also wasn’t good, and he has been the worst member of the postseason roster. He has now faced 10 batters in the series and six of them have reached base. He was unable to retire George Springer for a second straight game and was unable to record an out at all against Springer and Altuve in the seventh. His latest egg eventually turned into two insurance runs for the Astros, not that they would even need them though with Torres providing the Yankees’ lone run of the game in the eighth.

As for the offense, outside of LeMahieu, Judge and Torres, who again should all be batting consecutively, there’s no one to feel good about when they’re at the plate right now. Gardner and Encarnacion are both down to .200 with a .579 and .606 OPS respectively, Gregorius is at .227 and his OPS also isn’t good at .655 and is only even that high because of his grand slam in Game 2 of the ALDS, Sanchez has two singles in the entire postseason and isn’t having good at-bats in this series like he did in the previous series with his OPS looking like it’s missing the “O” and the “P” at .335 and Gio Urshela has been as bad as Gardner and Encarnacion. The Yankees are trying to beat the 107-win Astros with three productive batters and six near-automatic outs in their lineup. If not for Masahiro Tanaka and Torres in Game 1, the Yankees would be playing an elimination game in Game 4.

All season I was worried about two things in the postseason: Boone screwing everything up like he did last October and the lineup disappearing like it did in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS. Well, Boone is starting to screw things up, and the offense has scored in two of the last 20 innings.

It took the Yankees one game to give home-field advantage back to the Astros. One lousy game in which the Yankees left nine on against the best pitcher in baseball. The Astros trailed in this series after one lousy game of their own and rebounded to win the next two to put the pressure back on the Yankees. Now it’s the Yankees’ turn to answer and rebound from 15 straight embarrassing innings since Judge’s two-run home run off Justin Verlander in the fourth inning of Game 2.

It’s a guarantee the nonsensical decision to bat Torres fifth will be rectified for Game 4 and he will be back hitting third where he did to open the series in Houston. It should also be a guarantee that the entire lineup should be adjusted. The Yankees need to find their offense and they have to find it in the next game. If the Yankees’ offensive trend continues the way it has since that Judge home run, they won’t have to worry about trying to win a game or games in Houston later in the series because the series won’t make it back there.

***

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

The Yankees’ goal for the first two games of the ALCS in Houston was to win one game. Win one game and get home-field advantage, and then do what the 2017 Yankees did against the Astros in New York. As soon as Game 1 ended, the Yankees had done enough in Houston, but they were very close to doing much more.

The Yankees and every Yankees fan would have signed up for a tie game with Justin Verlander out of the game in Game 2. Verlander was always going to pitch well at home on regular rest, so getting him out of a 2-2 game was the best-case scenario for Game 2. Verlander was good, but not great on Sunday. He caught some breaks with high-exit-velocity rockets right at fielders and the great play by Carlos Correa to throw DJ LeMahieu at home on the Brett Gardner single. Verlander wasn’t as dominant as he has been against the Yankees at times in the four other postseason series the Yankees have played against him, and the Yankees had more than enough chances to take a 2-0 series lead.

Theoretically, the Yankees had the Astros right where they wanted them with the game tied, Verlander done and a battle of the bullpens for the remainder of the game. But James Paxton’s lack of length put the Yankees at a disadvantage, needing to use their elite options beginning in the third, while the Astros didn’t have to turn to their bullpen until the seventh.

It turns out my lack of trust in James Paxton, despite how he finished the regular season, was for a reason. Paxton was bad in the Game 1 of the ALDS and he was even worse on Sunday, unable to throw a first-pitch strike, get outs or give the team any length. His line this October: 7 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 11 K, 2 HR, 5.14 ERA, 1.714 WHIP. Paxton has put his team in early holes in both games, needing the offense to come back each time he has been in the mound. Thankfully, the Yankees have their deep bullpen to save Paxton like they were asked to do did in Game 2.

The decision to remove Paxton with two on and two outs in the third was the best decision Aaron Boone has made as Yankees manager. A year ago, he would have waited until both runners scored before going to his bullpen, but this season he has been quick to go to his bullpen and rightfully so. Paxton clearly didn’t have it and he wasn’t going to find it until the Yankees trailed by multiple runs. Boone sensing the urgency to keep the deficit manageable against Verlander went to Chad Green. Even though Boone is much older than me, I feel like a proud father watching him grow up right before my very eyes.

Green was awesome. He got the team out of Paxton’s jam and pitched two perfect innings, throwing 21 of 26 pitches for strikes. He was cruising when Boone removed him from the game in the fifth, but it wasn’t necessarily the wrong move. If he leaves Green in for Springer and Springer hits a home run, Boone is going to get ripped for not going to Adam Ottavino or Tommy Kahnle with Green having pitched two full innings. The move wasn’t wrong, it just didn’t work out.

The first pitch Ottavino threw in relief of Green was a middle-middle, flat slider which Springer hammered for a game-tying home run. It sucked, but it’s hard to get on Boone for the move or anyone in the Yankees’ bullpen for their performance when they’re being asked to pitch 6 2/3 innings and get 19 of 27 outs against this Astros lineup. The Astros were more than likely going to score, it just happened on the first pitch Ottavino threw. That’s the problem with getting no length from your starter and using so many relievers in the same game: you need all of them to be on on the same night. Ottavino wasn’t and the game was tied.

The only issue was that by time he came out of the game, the Yankees were already on their third of five elite relievers. Tommy Kahnle was in the game after Green and Ottavino were already used, and the Astros had yet to go to their top relievers, while the Yankees had already used the majority of theirs. If the game was going to continue, the Yankees were going to have to use some-less-than-stellar options to get outs.

The game did continue. The Yankees couldn’t do anything against the Astros’ bullpen, putting together three-minute innings, while the Astros made the Yankees’ bullpen work for every out in what felt like 30-minute innings. Boone only went to Zack Britton for one inning (12 pitches) and Aroldis Chapman for one inning (25 pitches), so after nine innings, the Yankees were out of elite options. It took CC Sabathia, Jonathan Loaisiga and J.A. Happ to miraculosly escape a 10th-inning jam, and it certainly felt like if the Yankees didn’t score in the 11th, it would take a second straight miracle inning to see the 12th.

After two quick outs by Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres, Edwin Encarnacion walked and Gardner singled. Gary Sanchez came up with a chance to be the Game 2 hero and give the Yankees a lead, and it seemed like he might after working a 10-pitch at-bat, but he eventually struck out looking on a pitch which was nowhere near the zone. That was the game.

As expected with the left-handed, fastball-throwing Happ on the mound in the 10th against a right-handed heavy, fastball-crushing lineup, Correa ended the game on the first pitch of the 11th with a solo home run to right field. Game over, series tied.

Even though the Yankees accomplished what they wanted in Houston by winning a game, it could have been much more with one more timely hit. It’s hard to feel good coming off a loss, but the Yankees and Yankees fans should recognize it’s the Astros who should feel down after giving away the home-field advantage they won over the Yankees in the regular season.

If the next three games go the way they did two years ago, the Astros won’t get their home-field advantage back, and won’t play another game in Houston this season. It’s a lofty goal, but it’s the next goal: end the series in New York.

***

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