Before Game 3
They do ... ?
They don't!
ALCS Game 3
Astros - 110 000 200 - 4 7 0 Yankees - 000 000 010 - 1 5 1
George A. King III, Post:
Yankees Doom Themselves In ALCS Game 3 Loss To AstrosKristie Ackert, Daily News:
When the Yankees and Astros were headed for each other in a postseason showdown of American League superpowers, a popular question being asked of the Yankees was a fair one:
"Who is going to beat Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole?"
Three games into the best-of-seven ALCS, the answer is: nobody.
And after the Yankees didn't take advantage of ... Cole on Tuesday, they may have wasted a chance that will cost them a trip to the World Series. ...
[T]hey now have to win three of four to return to the World Series for the first time since 2009.
Game 4 is scheduled for Wednesday, but with the amount of rain being predicted, Noah would be worried. If the game is postponed, it will be played Thursday, with Game 5 held on Friday. ...
The biggest scare the Yankees put into Cole during his seven-inning stint surfaced in the fifth, when Edwin Encarnacion halted an 0-for-16 slide with a two-out double and Torres walked.
Didi Gregorius, who offered at the first pitch in three of his four at-bats, gave the Yankees a chance by chasing Reddick to within a few feet of the right-field wall only to see the ball die for the third out with two runners on. ...
The two stranded runners upped the total to nine against Cole in five innings. During those five frames the Yankees went hitless in six at-bats with runners in scoring position. ...
DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge opened the home first with singles, but Gardner flied to short center and Encarnacion popped out. The threat gained momentum when Torres walked to load the bases, but died as Gregorius grounded out.
Judge whiffed with two on in the second and LeMahieu ended the fourth with a fly to center that stranded Gio Urshela and Aaron Hicks, who drew two-out walks from Cole.
Yankees Showered With Boos In The BronxAlso: Brett Gardner is 2-for-13, Edwin Encarnacion and Didi Gregorius are both 1-for-12.
Adam Ottavino, Gary Sanchez and the Yankees heard it from the crowd Tuesday night. ... Sanchez, the bats and Ottavino continued their postseason slump Tuesday night as the Astros beat the Yankees 4-1 at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees have lost two straight games ... [and] are now in a 2-1 hole in the best-of-seven series.
The frustration of a full Yankee Stadium was stoked by the fact that an offense which scored the most runs in baseball this season had Cole on the ropes Tuesday, but couldn't get a run off him. ...
In their two losses to the Astros, the Yankees were 1-for-9 with RISP and stranded 16. ...
Sanchez, who is now 1-for-13 in this series, and 2-for-22 with eight strikeouts in the postseason, took the brunt of the fans frustration when he was booed after striking out in the sixth inning. ...
[Sanchez:] "[H]opefully we'll get back on track."
There is limited time to get back on track ...
Ottavino, who gave up the game-tying home run in Game 2, was booed loudly because he could not hold the Astros to a 2-0 lead. ... Since Sept. 8, ... [he] has allowed six earned runs in 8.1 innings pitched. ...
Ottavino was one of the Yankees' big free-agent signings this past winter, with an eye towards having a shut-down bullpen in October. ... "I am just thinking about the next game and the next opportunity."
If Ottavino, Sanchez and the Yankees don't get on track there won't be many more of those opportunities in 2019.
Ken Davidoff, Post:
Gerrit Cole Sends Yankees Into Their First Postseason Crisis
Well, it's pretty simple what the Yankees must do from here, right?
Go on a roll, or else it's Cole.
Unless the Yankees defeat the Astros, baseball's winningest team in 2019, in the next three American League Championship Series games, they can't reach ... [the] World Series ... without defeating (or at least outlasting) Gerrit Cole ... baseball's finest pitcher of the moment, in a do-or-die Game 7 on Sunday night at Minute Maid Park.
Of course, right now the Yankees probably would agree to that devil's bargain, as it would guarantee them not being eliminated by Game 7.
Welcome to the first crisis point of this Yankees postseason. ...
"Obviously, tonight [my] fastball command was a bit of a struggle ...," Cole said. "I know it will be better next time."
Just what the Yankees want to hear, right? Cole ... blanked the Yankees over seven innings despite walking a season-high five and permitting four hits. The Yankees placed runners in scoring position with two outs in four of the first five innings, and each time, Cole doused the fire. ...
The Yankees have problems, from Giancarlo Stanton's strained right quadriceps that benched him for a second straight game to Adam Ottavino's October implosion to Gary Sanchez looking more lost at the plate than Bobby and Cindy Brady did in the Grand Canyon. ...
[Cole] has now registered 25 straight starts without being charged with a loss, and the Astros have won Cole's last 15 starts.
Think the Yankees want to put their season on the line against those streaks? ...
The Yankees do not currently look like a team that can pull off such a preemptive strike, let alone topple the best arm in the game. And if they live up to that look, they'll be watching Cole pitch again, from their respective homes, in the Fall Classic.
Everything Has Changed In This Yankees-Astros War
The Yankees won Game 1 of this best-of-seven American League Championship Series. They led Game 2. They'd stolen home-field from the Astros, threatened to sweep them at Minute Maid Park …
And in what feels like an eyeblink, they're back where they started.
The Astros won Game 3 on Tuesday afternoon, 4-1, the Yankees done in by too much Gerrit Cole and by just enough Astros offense. ...
They surrendered home-field with this loss, and suddenly find themselves two games away from winter. That 2-1 lead on Sunday vanished with one hanging slider from Adam Ottavino to George Springer, and an awful lot has changed between then and now. None of it good for New York.
The Yankees certainly had their chances against Cole ... They got plenty of traffic against him, had multiple runners on against him in three of the first five innings.
But they couldn't cash any of it, despite four hits and five walks. Cole ... made big pitches every time he needed them: in the first, retiring Didi Gregorius with the bases loaded; in the second, striking out Aaron Judge with two aboard.
And then in the fifth, two on again after back-to-back two-out walks, Gregorius up, hunting for a pitch to drive, getting one, and clobbering it high and deep to right. ... [I]t backed Josh Reddick to the wall. Maybe Jeffrey Maier might have been able to help, but Maier is 35 years old now. Reddick caught it. The Astros kept their lead. ...
For the Yankees, a whiff of desperation — just a whiff, mind you — has begun to waft into the proceedings. They aren't necessarily entering must-win territory. But they're inching closer. A little too close for their comfort.
Joel Sherman, Post:
Yankees Must Bench Gary Sanchez, Demote Adam OttavinoGreg Joyce, Post:
One day you win the ALCS opener in Houston, improve to 4-0 in this postseason, feel like a team riding a magic carpet. Blink twice and the Yankees are now down two games to one. ...
"... during the postseason you can have no patience," [Joe] Torre [once] said ...
Boone has to lose patience now. He has to bench Gary Sanchez and stop using Adam Ottavino in anything that resembles high leverage.
They were not the only reasons the Yankees lost 4-1 ... But they are hurting the Yankees too much to keep going with them. ...
Sanchez hardly is alone in offensive malfeasance. It is just that he has essentially been a postseason dud his whole career. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in Game 3. That makes him 1-for-11 with six whiffs in this ALCS, 2-for-21 with 10 strikeouts and without an extra-base hit in these playoffs and 16-for-92 with 34 strikeouts in his postseason totality.
He also failed to block what went for a Zack Britton wild pitch in the seventh inning. At this point, Boone has to ask if Austin Romine could be worse and just may be better? ...
That seventh inning was set up for failure by Ottavino. He entered with Houston ahead 2-0 after six innings and walked George Springer leading off. Then with Springer running, Altuve bounced a single to the vacated second base to put runners on first and third. Ottavino was removed, but the two runs scored. ...
Ottavino has now allowed nine of the 16 batters he faced to reach safely in these playoffs. ... Boone [keeps] insisting that the Yankees can't get where they want to go ... without Ottavino getting big outs.
Yankees' Gary Sanchez Struggling In More Than One AreaThe New York papers have been pushing Luis Severino as a difference maker this postseason:
Boos rained down on Gary Sanchez as he took the lonely walk back to the dugout in the sixth inning Tuesday night.
The Yankees catcher had just struck out for the second straight at-bat, and by the end of his 0-for-4 night, he had fallen even deeper into his postseason slump ...
Sanchez has gone missing, to the tune of 2-for-21 with 10 strikeouts and three walks in these playoffs, failing to provide any kind of offense for a team in need of it against the stud pitching of the Astros. He was 1-for-8 with three walks in the Yankees' ALDS sweep of the Twins ...
Now, Sanchez's woes have entered the spotlight as one of the main culprits in a quiet offense. ...
As if Sanchez's bat wasn't frustrating Yankees fans enough, his defense came into play in the top of the seventh inning. With the bases loaded and one out, Zack Britton threw back-to-back sinkers in the dirt to Yuli Gurriel. The first one got past Sanchez, but didn't go far thanks to a deflection from home plate umpire Kerwin Danley. The second one evaded Sanchez's blocking again and went all the way to the backstop, allowing Jose Altuve to score from third base for the 3-0 Astros lead.
October 3, before the ALDS
October 14
So how did that "daunting challenge" go?
Mark Fischer, Post:
Alex Rodriguez Leading Charge On Luis Severino Pitch-Tipping ConspiracyDan Martin, Post:
Is Luis Severino tipping pitches again?
That's what Alex Rodriguez seemed to believe after the Yankees starter struggled in the first inning of Tuesday's ALCS Game 3 in The Bronx.
A-Rod broke down Severino's pitching on Twitter: 36 pitches; 18 fastballs; 18 secondary pitches; 11 swings on fastballs; five swings on off-speed pitches, no swings and misses.
"No chases on off-speed pitches," the former Yankee wrote. "If you look at Astros' hitters body language, this screams tipping." ...
The Yankees have a short leash on their starting pitchers, and the bullpen started heating up during the first inning. ...
Severino ... has a history of tipping pitches. In Game 3 of the ALDS last season, Severino gave up six runs in three innings in a 16-1 loss to the Red Sox. ...
It took Luis Severino 97 pitches to get through 4.1 innings in the Yankees' 4-1 loss to the Astros in Game 3 of the ALCS on Tuesday.
He only regretted two of them.
"I made two bad pitches," Severino said of the solo homers he allowed to Jose Altuve and Josh Reddick. "Two bad sliders right down the middle to Reddick and Altuve. You can't miss location like that."
The right-hander also needed 36 pitches to get through a grueling top of the first. [Severino allowed one home run in the first, so I guess the other 35 pitches in that inning were not mistakes??] ...
Reddick opened the top of the second with a long homer to right to make it 2-0. Like Altuve's shot, it came off a slider, which was producing no swings and misses for Severino early on.
Mark Fischer, Post:
Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman seems to think the Yankees made a mistake by not acquiring him at the MLB trade deadline — at least according to his social media activity.
Stroman endorsed a series of tweets Tuesday night — during the Yankees' 4-1 loss to the Astros in Game 3 of the ALCS — that criticized the Yanks for not beefing up their starting rotation at the deadline.
"This is the series when the @Yankees regret not making a move to get a stud pitcher," wrote Pierce W. Huff in a tweet "liked" by Stroman. ...
One Twitter user mockingly replied to a highlight of Yankees starting pitcher Luis Severino giving up a home run Tuesday night with Cashman's reasoning for passing on Stroman.
Stroman "liked" that tweet as well.
The Brady Bunch reference is a "pearler" !!!!!
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned a few weeks ago a reference that's current & "right on time" .......
That episode aired on October 1, 1971, so it's 48 years old. Nearly a half-century!!
ReplyDeleteGame 4, postponed to Thursday. No off-day now between Games 5 and 6.
ReplyDeletePost:
The Astros are using Wednesday's rainout to move up their aces. Zack Greinke will now start Game 4 on Thursday night in the Bronx and Justin Verlander will take the mound in Game 5 on Friday. The Astros initially planned to use a bullpen approach in Game 4, but the postponement allows Greinke to start on regular rest.
The Yankees will move up Masahiro Tanaka to start Game 4 after he threw six shutout innings in the 7-0 series-opening win. Manager Aaron Boone said James Paxton is "likely" to start Game 5.
Joel Sherman, Post:
You remember starting pitching, right? Those are the guys before the relievers. ...
If the Yankees are eliminated for a third straight year by a team with a superior rotation (the Astros in 2017, Red Sox in 2018), questions will rise anew about whether general manager Brian Cashman's administration should have been bolder with dollars and/or prospects to acquire Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, etc. ...
The biggest moment of this series, to date, was George Springer's fifth-inning homer Sunday in Game 2 on the first pitch Ottavino threw, which tied the score en route to Houston winning in extra innings to even the ALCS. ...
The rainout Wednesday means that for the Yankees to win, they have to now either win three straight or three out of four — the last two in Houston — without an off-day. The off-day Friday, like the one on Monday, would have allowed a built-in rest day for the relievers.
Now, for the Yankees to reach their first World Series in a decade, Boone will have to intensify the burden on that pen without the rest. Remember, Boone was preparing for this all year. The Yankees were the only team not to use any reliever three straight days this year. ...
Houston's advantage in this series was going to be starting pitching, and Zack Greinke and Verlander will start in the Bronx on full rest, with Cole looming in Game 7 if necessary. The starting edge projects larger after the rainout, which impacts the Yankees bullpen far more than it does the Astros rotation.
***
The fascinating thing so far is how "inept" both offences have been, 7-10 in runs & about 3 for 746 with RISP !
ReplyDeleteI get the strong feeling that Gm 4 & 5 will be more high scoring & potentially a Blowout as well, at some point either or both is gonna cut loose & we may see an 8-6 or say 12-2 scoreline & that may well mean I'd be surprised if Verlander or Cole isn't required to "finish it" ? ....... Please Please bring on the YED !