An Epic Comeback gets Fry’d - Yankees vs Guardians (ALCS Game 3 Recap)

I’m roughly 12 hours removed from one of the wilder playoff games in recent memory and truly don’t know how to abridge my thoughts and feelings into a single shitty blog post. I was 1 strike away from confidently titling this write-up “A Master Clase: Judge and Stanton Kill Cleveland” — yet here I am having to type about some fucker named “Big Christmas”. I’m still confident the Yanks will inevitably get by the Guards, but unfortunately the ALCS won’t be the complete and utter mockery I had hoped for.

I suppose it’s time for me to try the local Cleveland cruise and eat some crow.

The game started with yet another lefty junk baller completely decimating our lineup. Had it not been for Josh Naylor’s inability to move vertically or horizontally, the Yanks would’ve been blanked by Boyd through 5. Of course, this lackluster effort was greatly aided by Jose Trevino, who committed the team’s nightly baserunning error to snuff out a 2nd inning rally.

In quite literally every game the Yanks have played this postseason, they have a major opportunity in the early innings and have completely failed to put teams away. While the pickoffs and K’s in these situations haven’t necessarily killed them as of yet, it has forced Boone into using the high leverage relievers on a nightly basis.

Turns out, it would be time to pay the piper for the early game ineptitude a few hours later.

Clarke Schmidt was his usual self. It seems as though he’ll never be able to get deep into games (especially in the playoffs) and the one or two mistakes will equate to his earned run total for the evening. Manzardo’s 2-run blast off Schmidt gave the Guards their first lead of the series. This would then allow Vogt to finally deploy his 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Cleveland, Ohio) that have proven to be lethal in innings 6 through 9.

In the 6th, both of Boone’s roster change decisions blew up in his gum chomping face. Berti booted a routine grounder, leading to Ian Hamilton being injured while awkwardly covering first. This then led to Tim Mayza entering the game and missing low on roughly 14 consecutive sliders. Trevino’s inability to control the run game led to a runner on third - and with the infield playing in, Gimenez was able to single on a soft a ground ball to give the Guards a 3–1 lead.

Boone got cute and played right into their small ballin’ hands. Be better.

On a night where the Yanks had just 3 hits through 7 innings, I had basically accepted the fact that they would go down quietly as they have in so many of these playoff losses. Clase was coming down the stairs to record 4 outs, the first of which being Aaron Judge — who had seemingly lost any sort of positive momentum he had from game 2 with a trio of terrible at bats earlier in the night.

His game-tying, 2-run, piss-missile sent me into complete euphoria. This is a game the Yankees have lost (and still would end up losing) so many times in past postseasons. But not this year, this is finally it. We’re going to win the World Series.

And then — Giancarlo tanks one off Clase to give the Yanks a 4–3 lead. I cackled as Vogt pathetically challenged whether Stanton missed the bag as he danced around the bases. This team was dead, we have killed them and they’ve decided to go out like total punks and I was savoring every second of it.

But baseball can be a funny game sometimes…

After being the backbone of every Yankee victory thus far, Luke Weaver would give up a 400-foot double followed by a 750-foot homer with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. Cleveland had done it, they’d played their Chief Wahoo Uno Reverse Card right in my stupid face and not only tied the game, but saved their season.

Clay Holmes would then get similar treatment in the bottom of the 10th, as David Fry tanked a game winner deep into the night.

If there is a silver lining to be found in getting walked off in devastating fashion — its that this loss wasn’t of the pathetic variety we’re so accustomed to. We mounted the epic comeback against their top guy and then our overtaxed bullpen finally got clipped. It definitely hurts knowing we should be up 3–0, preparing for a champagne shower later tonight — but at the same time, we saw our best players actually come up in the clutch for the first time this decade.

While that 8th inning will be forgotten by most, there should be a sense of optimism in the fact that we took a desperate team’s best punch and still have a golden opportunity to close out the series later this weekend. The whole identity of this Guardians team is using their bullpen to win games when they’re up after 5. We just blew that shit up in epic fashion because their pen is even more overworked than ours.

I’m glad Cleveland had their Hallmark moment to commemorate their 4th place season - but that shit ain’t happening 3 more times.

I fully expect this Yankees team to come back with a vengeance in game 4.