1. Pathetic.
Needing to win Game 3 to avoid going down 3-0 in the World Series, the Yankees’ offense put together a disgraceful performance against a starting pitcher that every team has gotten to this season. The Yankees were no-hit into the fourth inning and were held scoreless by Dodgers pitching through 8 2/3 innings. Their only two runs in the loss came on a meaningless two-run home run by Alex Verdugo in the ninth that he admired as if he were Freddie Freeman hitting an actual timely home run. They got another shit start from a starting pitcher — the one facet of the game they had a distinct advantage in entering the series — picked up another infield error and had their moronic third-base coach create yet another out at home plate in a season full of them. Once again, the bullpen did its job to keep the Dodgers at bay for a lengthy amount of time to give the offense a chance to come back, but the offense never came back, taking fastball after fastball down the middle, while continuing to chase breaking balls off the plate.
2. After Game 2, I wrote:
The first inning of Game 3 is the most important inning of Clarke Schmidt’s life. Yankee Stadium is going to be loud. It’s going to be raucous. It’s going to be full of believers who think this series isn’t over (including yours truly). He has to put up a zero. He can’t let Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandes get to him. Not in the first inning. If they get to him later, so be it. He has to give the bats a chance to get on the board first. He has to give the crowd a reason to stay loud and stay involved. He can’t go out and have a Rodon-like inning and allow a crooked number. Don’t allow any number.
So much for that. Schmidt walked Shohei Ohtani on four pitches to begin the game and two batters later fell behind Freeman 2-0 and then threw the future Hall of Famer a fastball he crushed into right-field seats for an early 2-0 lead. Freeman has now homered in every game of this series and for the player who was supposedly playing on one leg entering the World Series, he’s now in line to be the unanimous MVP of the series.
Schmidt was bad, just like Rodon was in Game 2, and now after 12 postseason games, the Yankees have received three good starts (ALDS Game 4, ALCS Game 1 and World Series Game 1). Their starting pitching has failed them just like their offense has.
3. The always-delusional Nestor Cortes put it best in how the Yankees will spin the series: “This series, stuff hasn’t gone our way.”
The Yankees internally likely feel the same way as an organization as Cortes. They don’t look across the field and see a team that is doing everything better than the Yankees. They look across the field and think the Dodgers have gotten all the breaks. That they’re luckier. That they’re better at playing craps. Since the postseason is just a crapshoot, right?
Aaron Boone not using Luke Weaver in the 10th inning in Game 1 wasn’t a bad break. The offense having one hit through eight innings in Game 2 and Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe destroying the ninth-inning rally wasn’t unlucky. The offense taking the night off in the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium in 15 years wasn’t the result of bad bounces. In the World Series, the Yankees haven’t played like the championship-caliber team Boone, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner will tell us they are once they lose one more game. They have played like the team that went 11-23 from the middle of June until the end of July.
4. After watching the team’s listless offensive performance in Games 1 and 2, Boone decided he would change his lineup for Game 3. Except he only made one change. He removed the struggling Austin Wells for in favor of Jose Trevino. Wells has been bad for more than a month, but at least there’s the threat of him running into a fastball, no matter how small that threat is. There’s no threat for the opposition with Trevino at the plate. The only threat is toward his own team that he will hit the ball on the ground and make two outs instead of one. And for as bad as Wells has been, at least he’s capable of holding the running game in check.
5. Boone’s intelligent move to jumpstart his offense was to put the worst bat of the 13 position players on the roster in the starting lineup, completely disregarding the additional righty-righty matchup he was creating — the type of matchup he lives to avoid. But with the Yankees trailing late in the game, he decided Wells gave him a better chance to produce offense and had him pinch hit for Trevino. A genius at work. Never change, Boone, you idiot, never change.
The Boone Yankees are 6-18 in the postseason against non-AL Central teams with no series wins.
6. “I know how good this team is,” Alex Verdugo said, “and if that team can win three in a row, why can’t we win three in a row?”
That team’s star players are hitting like stars and their role players are playing their roles. The Yankees’ offense is being propped up by Giancarlo Stanton and Juan Soto and no one else is doing anything, especially Judge.
7. “Don’t listen to the outside noise, because it’s just noise,” Judge said. “We’ve got a job to do on the field.”
The outside noise was all positive for Judge on Monday. Yankee Stadium erupted when his name was called during player introductions before the game. The Stadium gave him standing ovations for each of his four miserable plate appearances. And he repaid the pity cheers and embarrassingly soft display by the fan base by going hitless once again. After going 0-for-3 (with a meaningless walk in the eighth inning) in Game 3, Mr. May is now 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the World Series. He has completely devalued his regular season with his postseason, striking out in 20 of 43 at-bats.
8. “We’re trying to get a game tomorrow, OK?” an annoyed Boone said. “Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world.”
What time do you think the viewing party is in the Yankees clubhouse of the 2004 ALCS video Boone showed the team two years ago? 3:30? 4:30? Maybe Boone can have the Stadium video screen operator show Dave Roberts’ Game 4 stolen base and David Ortiz’s walk-off home run off of Paul Quantrill in between innings on Tuesday? Maybe Boone can ask those two to address his team prior to Game 4 since they will both be at the Stadium?
Since the comedic comparisons of this team in the 2024 World Series to the 1996 and 2001 Yankees are no longer valid, I’m sure there will be plenty of talk on Tuesday about how this Yankees team compares to the 2004 Red Sox. Spoiler: they don’t.
9. I want nothing more than for the Yankees to win on Tuesday and Wednesday in The Bronx, and then win on Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles to become the second team ever to erase a 3-0 deficit in MLB history. But it’s hard to believe in this Yankees team when there’s a better chance they are getting no-hit into the fifth inning or being shut out into the eighth inning of Game 4 than there seems to be that they can win Game 4.
10. For the first time this postseason, the Yankees will play a game facing elimination in Game 4. If the Yankees lose Game 4, their season is over. There won’t be another Yankees game in 2024 and there may never be another game with Juan Soto as a Yankee. Their last two postseason appearances will have ended in four-game sweeps to two teams that are actually championship-caliber and not in the way the Yankees talk about being since you have to actually win a championship to be considered such.
Last modified: Oct 29, 2024
