CLEVELAND — For nearly an hour Thursday night, the New York Yankees had seemingly overcome a bout of sloppy baseball to pull within a win of the World Series in jaw-dropping, crowd-silencing, totally bonkers fashion.
Down two runs with two outs in the eighth inning, the Yankees were tasked to solve Emmanuel Clase, the best closer in baseball, to give themselves a chance to take a 3-0 series lead. In 74 regular season appearances, the fireballer allowed five earned runs. The Detroit Tigers got to him once in the AL Division series — before he shut them down again in multi-inning appearances in the next two games. Erasing the deficit appeared next-to-impossible.
Then Aaron Judge blasted a low line drive that pierced through the air, just over the right-field wall for a game-tying two-run home run. Two minutes later, Giancarlo Stanton crushed a slider over the wall in center-field to make it back-to-back homers and a one-run New York lead. The Yankees spilled out of their dugout in celebration. They had slayed the mighty Clase.
Then, well, then a game bordering on the absurd leaped across the line to give us one of the most memorable games in recent postseason history.
“That was an incredible game on both sides. All the emotions, ups and downs, back and forth, you name it,” Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “If there’s an emotion, we all felt it on both sides.”
Roller coaster. Heavyweight fight. Insert cliche here. It was a classic baseball game. Here are the game’s six biggest moments — with the win probability before each turn — to illustrate the madness.
Top of the eighth inning, two outs
Cleveland leads, 3-1
Win probability: 93.2% Cleveland
The Judge at-bat against Clase starts with what happened moments before it started, when Guardians right-hander Hunter Gaddis seemed to pitch around Soto. Gaddis, whose 5% walk rate during the regular season was tied for 14th among relievers, issued a two-out, four-pitch walk to Soto, and none of the pitches were particularly close. Vogt then replaced Gaddis with Clase.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he didn’t believe Gaddis pitched around Soto. Judge said he had “no idea.” Regardless, the sequence set up a marquee matchup. Judge vs. Clase. Power vs. power. The best hitter in the world against the best reliever in the world.
The clash tilted toward Clase early. The right-hander jumped ahead on Judge with a cutter down the middle that Judge fouled off and a cutter down away he swung through. Judge then took a 99-mph cutter way off the plate before Clase dotted the outside corner with another 99-mph cutter.
“He just stayed with it,” Stanton said of Judge. “It was incredible. It wasn’t a bad pitch. It was low and away, on the black. And he does what he does.”
What Judge did was barrel the baseball. It traveled 109.9 mph off the bat and landed 356 away, just over the wall, and bounced into the stands as Judge sprinted to first base. Tie game.
“I thought it was low,” Judge said. “So, you know, my first thought is try to be on second base. Hopefully Juan can score or he’s at third base. But try to get on second base for Big G coming up in that situation.”
Top of the eighth inning, two outs
Tie game, 3-3
Win probability: 59.9% Cleveland
Like his fellow gargantuan teammate, Stanton fell behind 0-2. He fouled off a 91-mph slider, swung through a 100-mph cutter, and fouled off a cutter down the middle. Two pitches later, he fouled off a 93-mph slider over the plate. Those two pitches stuck with him.
“He was riding the cutters and sliders in, so it was just get one out over the plate,” Stanton said. “And I missed a couple out over the plate so I was able to get to the third one.”
The third one was the seventh pitch of the battle, a 90-mph slider that caught too much plate. Stanton pounced with an 85-mph swing — the hardest by a player on either side Thursday. It jumped off the bat at 106.1 mph and was deposited 390 feet from home plate.
“I think I threw a right fist pump, like fired up,” Boone said. “But you’re right in the game …You’re kind of staying with what’s next. But you certainly feel the energy of a couple shots like that.”
And just like that, the Yankees had a lead. It was the first time Clase had given up multiple home runs in a game in 326 career appearances, postseason included. New York was three outs from pulling within a win of its first World Series appearance in 15 years. It was a stunning turn of events. And it was just getting started.
Bottom of the ninth inning, two outs
Yankees lead, 5-3
Win probability: 98.5% New York
Luke Weaver, called on for a four-out save, had danced out of a two-on, two-out jam in the eighth inning by striking out David Fry. Then, after Anthony Rizzo committed an error to start the bottom of the ninth, he started a nifty 1-6-3 double play to squash Cleveland’s momentum.
He was one out away from his fourth postseason save of at least four outs. It looked imminent when he jumped ahead 0-2 on Lane Thomas after the double play. But suddenly, he lost the momentum. The next three pitches were uncompetitive and Thomas took them to run the count full. The sixth pitch of the at-bat was a 95-mph fastball down and in that Thomas hooked off the tall left-field wall.
“You get to 0-2 and you just try to do a little too much,” Weaver said. “Thomas has a good at-bat there, and, yeah, the moment starts to get a little big. So just trying to take a step back and tonight didn’t quite have the execution in that moment that I needed to.”
Bottom of the ninth inning, two outs
Yankees lead, 5-3
Win probability: 95.4% New York
After the game, Vogt was clear about his motivation in sending Jhonkensy Noel up to pinch-hit for Daniel Schneemann: “I mean, he pinch hit to hit a homer,” Vogt said. “That’s why we sent him up there.” And, boy, did the man they call Big Christmas deliver.
After taking another uncompetitive pitch way out of the strike zone, Noel pounced on a fat changeup over the heart of the plate and left no doubt. He smoothly flipped his bat to the side the second he made contact to tie the game. Pandemonium rained around him. He had, at least for the moment, effectively saved the Guardians’ season.
“Just really felt like I let the team down there, myself down,” Weaver said. “It’s baseball, things like that happen. A twist of an arm and it just feels a little devastating. We’re still in a good position. Feel like there’s some momentum there, but they earned it. It was a crazy game. The bats were hot and the ball was flying out of the park.
Weaver hadn’t given up a home run or multiple runs since Sept. 2 — his last appearance before becoming the Yankees’ primary closer.
“It hurts a little bit more, yeah,” Weaver said. “It hurts a little bit more knowing how hard they work to get the game to where it was. It hurts even more knowing I had 0-2, we’re one pitch away after a big double play. Yeah, it all stinks. It hurts more knowing how close we were, how big a 3-0 [lead] would be. But that’s life. I’ve been through plenty of failure to know that it’s not always how we want it to be.”
Top of the 10th inning, one out
Tie game, 5-5
Win probabiiity: 50.8% New York
The Yankees were threatening to quickly retake the lead when Stanton worked a one-out walk to bring up Jazz Chisholm Jr., who had walked and singled in his previous two plate appearances. This time, the Yankees third baseman hit a chopper in the hold at second base that appeared destined to leak through the infield.
That is until Guardians second baseman Andrés Giménez, ranging to his left, somehow snagged the baseball in shallow right field, twisted around, and made a leaping throw falling to his backside. It one-hopped to first baseman Josh Naylor, who stretched to his limit with his left foot just glancing the first base to complete the improbable out.
The play, reminiscent of the kinds Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar made in his three seasons as Cleveland’s second baseman at the turn of the century, deflated the Yankees’ rally.
“Andrés Giménez is the best infielder on the planet,” Vogt said. “He has been, and he will be. He makes plays that make us wow every single day it seems like.”
Bottom of the 10th inning, two outs
Tie game, 5-5
Win probability: 62.7% Cleveland
The night finally ended, after 3 hours and 52 minutes, with David Fry launching a mistake 1-2 sinker — up and over the plate — from Clay Holmes into the seats beyond the left-field wall.
“I just told God, like, ‘Hey, man, take this,'” Fry said. “It’s a tough matchup. Just try to have fun. You take the at-bat, got behind in the count and just got a pitch up in the zone and luckily it went out.”
The Yankees, up to that point, were 196-1 in their postseason history when leading by multiple runs in the ninth inning or later, according to ESPN Research. Their only other loss in that situation? Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS against … the Guardians.
“We’re supposed to go out there and do our job,” Holmes said. “That’s our job, to go out there and shut things down. Our hitters did a great job of putting us in position and we just didn’t make pitches. But our expectation is to go out there and put up zeroes.”
It was Fry’s second home run of the postseason, and both have been huge. The first was a go-ahead, two-run home run in Game 4 of the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers with the Guardians facing elimination. That home run saved the Guardians’ season before they came back to advance another round. Time will tell if Thursday’s heroics will do the same.