Shemp threw out the first pitch.
The last two times they faced the Astros in the ALCS, the Yankees lost tough, close series.
This year, they were determined to forge a different outcome.
Now, they are perilously close to succeeding, just not in the way they had hoped.
After two narrow losses to start the ALCS in Houston, the Yankees returned home Saturday and were outclassed by the Astros, pushing them to the brink of being swept out of the playoffs.
They couldn't hit, they couldn't field, and Gerrit Cole was outpitched by Cristian Javier in a 5-0 loss in Game 3 in The Bronx.
That has left the Yankees in the unenviable position of having to win four straight games . . .
Only one MLB team has managed to do it: The 2004 Red Sox, who beat the Yankees in four straight games en route to the title. . . .
Cole gave up a two-run homer to Chas McCormick after a two-out error by Harrison Bader in the second inning. Then, Cole left with the bases loaded and no one out in the sixth and all three runners scored.
The offense, in a rut for much of the playoffs, got even worse on Saturday, much to the dismay of the sold out Yankee Stadium crowd. . . .
[A] key mistake in the outfield burned the Yankees in the second inning.
With two outs, Christian Vázquez hit a fly ball to right-center that either Bader or Aaron Judge should have caught easily. A near-collision between the two, however, caused Bader to drop the ball.
The inning was extended, and McCormick sent an opposite-field shot to right that hit the top of the fence and bounced over for a two-run homer, which traveled just 335 feet and put the Yankees in a 2-0 hole.
Cole was yanked in the sixth inning, after 96 pitches, with the bases loaded and no one out in favor of Lou Trivino.
Trey Mancini hit a sacrifice fly to left and Vázquez followed with a two-run single to make it 5-0, as Houston's 7-8-9 hitters drove in all five runs.
Imagine "Citizen Kane" without being shown what "Rosebud" is. "Friends" without resolution on Ross and Rachel. "The Great Gatsby" without its final page.
[Hi, JoS here. Again. Sorry to interrupt the fun, but I wanted to point out that Sherman's references here are old even for a middle-aged, white sportswriter: Citizen Kane came out in 1941, The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 (97 years ago!), and Friends ended in that wonderful year of 2004. Including a pop culture reference from this century is unusually recent, but it's off-set by the other two, which are from 97 and 81 years ago.]
Is Aaron Judge's unforgettable season really going to end so forgettably? Is the Judge Era in Yankees baseball going to be remembered for never even reaching the World Series because they notably could never solve the Astros?
Judge . . . has been no October weightlifter. Instead, he is a co-conspirator to historic offensive ineptness. But, due to his stature, he is no sidekick. Judge is the face of it as his regular season of boom descends into a postseason of boo — at Yankee Stadium. . . .
Actually, this ALCS going as expected based on history. The Yankees have played 10 games against the Astros this season, and the only two they won — hell, the only two in which they led after any of the 91 innings between these teams — came on Judge walk-off hits in two late-June games. Then, like now, the Yankees go as Judge goes.
Thus, the Yankees are about to go home. . . .
[Game 3] will not be part of Judge's Yankeeography. His miscommunication on defense with Harrison Bader helped gift the Astros two runs in the second inning and, with one final chance to perhaps launch the Yankees back into the game/series, he grounded out with two on and two outs in the eighth. That left him 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in this game, 1-for-12 in this series . . .
For the third time in six years — the entire Judge era — the Yankees are facing elimination in the ALCS by the Astros. Their excuses (sign-stealing, buzzers, opening of a retractable roof) are like their performance against Houston — getting worse. They lost in seven games in 2017, six games in 2019 and are near humiliation this time. . . .
[T]he Yanks had one hit through eight innings before two meaningless ninth-inning singles. Cristian Javier had pitched the best game against the Yankees this season, throwing the first seven innings of a June 25 no-hitter with 13 strikeouts. He only threw a first-pitch strike to 6 of 19 hitters Saturday, yet still pitched 5.1 shutout innings as the Yankees could do nothing even ahead in the count.
During the season, Judge magic often saved them at these times. But he is now 5-for-32 with 14 strikeouts this postseason. Against Houston, he has a single and no walks in three games, and the Yankees are hitting .128 with four total runs.
You need to be neither jury nor Judge to see the obvious. The Yankees' only path to overcome a superior team living in their heads would be on Judge's broad shoulders.
But the regular season ended nearly three weeks ago.
Aaron Judge heard the boos Saturday night and he understood them. For the third time in the last six years, the Yankees have been on a collision course with the Astros for a chance to go to the World Series for the first time in 14 years. . . . [This could be] the third time the Bombers are bounced in the American League Championship Series. . . .
Only one team in the history of baseball has come back from losing the first three games of a seven-game series; the 2004 Red Sox came back to beat the Bombers. . . .
In the eight postseason games, 18 of the 22 earned runs [the Yankees] have scored were via the home run. Saturday was the second straight game when they did not hit a home run. They were 14-26 in games without a home run. As a team, they are 12-for-94 (.129) with four runs, five extra-base hits, nine walks and 41 strikeouts. . . .
Josh Donaldson . . . struck out to end the game to a chorus of boos from those who remained of the crowd announced at 47,569
The Yankees . . . have scored the fewest runs and have the lowest slugging percentage and OPS of the four teams still in the playoffs. . . .
Judge . . . is 5-32 with 2 homers and 14 strikeouts in eight playoff games. Anthony Rizzo is 1-for-9 . . . in the three games of the ALCS. Giancarlo Stanton . . . is 3-for-12. Matt Carpenter made contact Saturday, snapping his streak of eight straight strikeouts in his first postseason eight at-bats. He [is now] 1-for-9 in this series with seven strikeouts. Donaldson is 1-for-9 with seven strikeouts and Gleyber Torres is 1-for-11 . . .
Cole's night finished with some light drama, as the Yankees held a mound visit after the walk to Tucker, and when Yuli Gurriel's subsequent single put runners at every base, a second one made his removal mandatory.
"I was not ready to come out," Cole said in one of many short postgame answers. . . .
As for Cole, the tough loss puts his team in a situation where the odds are historically stacked against them. A total of 39 teams in major league history have fallen behind 0-3 in a postseason series. The 2004 Red Sox are still the only one that has come back to win. . . .
Pitching in defense of hitters that have been zombie-like all series is no easy task for a pitcher either. That's what Cole, Severino and Jameson Taillon have had to do in the first three ALCS games. Cole said they knew [they] would have to do everything in their power to help out [and pick up] a Yankee offense that is down horrendously. . . .
One group that absolutely was not going to provide that pick-me-up on Saturday were the fed up Yankee fans. The stadium started gradually clearing out after the Astros' put up a three-spot in the sixth inning and by the end of the game, all the noise coming from the seats was characterized by anger. . . .
The people who are planning to attend Game 4 bought tickets for a baseball game, but they might end up getting a funeral instead.
[T]he Yankees could have thrown a four-armed monster of Whitey Ford, Ron Guidry, David Cone and Allie Reynolds at Houston and it would not have mattered, unless baseball savants could devise a way to win a game without scoring a run.
There is fear and loathing in Mr. Judge's neighborhood following the 5-0 Game 3 defeat in The Bronx that left the Yankees on the verge of extinction as soon as Sunday. . . .
[T]he Yankees, waiting 'til next year … after year, after year, after year … since their last World Series title in 2009, will have to wait one more day to try and get so much as a single victory over their tormentors, who fair, square and otherwise, previously eliminated them from postseason play in 2015, 2017 and 2019. . . .
The Yankees need to play pristine ball to beat the Astros. They did not play pristine ball in Game 3.
The debatable call by Boone to remove Cole (the kind that adds up in the postseason) became academic when the Yankees . . . had one hit through the first 8.2 innings.
[In Houston's fifth inning] A walk and a flare that dropped into short right followed a hard-hit double to left. Boone had a choice between sticking with his ace or giving the ball to a reliever. He chose the latter, calling on Lou Trivino. . . .
The bases were cleared two batters into Trivino's stint after a sac fly and a two-run single. . . . Trivino . . . was booed after the inning. . . .
If you want to make the case that the Yankees might have been able to fight back had Cole remained in and wriggled out of the jam, well, you would sound like an individual talking about open roofs and exit velocity.
The Yankees have amassed 12 hits over three games, which includes a pair of two-out ninth-inning singles Saturday. They cut their strikeouts down to 10 after racking up 17 and 13, respectively, in Houston. Whoop-de-do.
Justin Tasch, Post:
Michael Kay clearly wasn't a fan of Aaron Boone's decision to pull Gerrit Cole in the sixth inning of the Yankees' Game 3 loss to the Astros on Saturday.
While the Yankees offense was listless in the 5-0 defeat that saw them fall behind 3-0 in the ALCS, the game was 2-0 when Cole loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth. He was at 96 pitches at that point, and Boone lifted Cole for Lou Trivino, who allowed all three inherited runners to score.
"I don't get it," Kay said on the YES Network postgame show. "I heard [Boone's] answer, he said 'We're down 2-0, we have to keep it right there.' Well don't you trust Gerrit Cole more than Lou Trivino? Even Gerrit Cole at [96] pitches, I trust him to save my season. Not a knock on Lou Trivino, but that's not even your top reliever. That doesn't make sense.
"The only thing that would've made sense was if Cole was hurt. He's not hurt. He's your ace. He won those two games against the Guardians. He's why you're in the American League Championship Series, and you take him out there because you didn't want the game to get out of hand? He's the guy [who] can keep it from getting out of hand."
For large swaths of the summer, both the Yankees and Mets not only looked like the best team in baseball, but also they both seemed custom-designed for October success. Between them, they won 200 games. That never has happened before in New York City, going back to 1962. . . .
Everyone, for almost six straight months, was in a good mood. Baseball made them that way.
Is it really this close to being over?
Is it truly possible that by the close of business Sunday, both ballparks could be shuttered, the padlocks fastened to the front doors, both teams leaving October in a hail of strikeouts and weak pop flies and runners stranded and rallies foiled? Can that be so?
Say it ain't so.
It's so.
The Yankees lost 5-0 to the Astros on Saturday in Game 3 of the ALCS, and that nudged their toes right to the edge of the abyss, nudged New York's fun-filled baseball season to the brink of extinction . . . Their scuffling offense continued to scuffle, and the Astros made them pay for it.
The Astros, in fact, made them pay for just about everything. There was the lazy fly ball in the second that Harrison Bader dropped after he was no doubt jarred by the onrushing presence of Aaron Judge. A few pitches later, Chas McCormick found the short porch in right field for a 2-0 lead.
Four innings later, Aaron Boone took the ball away from Gerrit Cole, sitting on 96 pitches, in a bases-loaded jam, and gave it instead to Lou Trivino. Two batters later it was 5-0. And the way the Yankees' bats presently look, that might well have been 15-0. Or 50-0. . . .
Saturday, the Yankees managed all of one hit against the Astros across the first 8.2 innings. Even when Houston showed a smidgen of largesse — Hunter Brown walking the first two hitters of the eighth inning — the best they could do was get a man to third before going down meekly.
Boos rained down then, and that has become the sad soundtrack of this postseason . . . boos in The Bronx. . . .
And here we are, at the brink, at the abyss, at the precipice. . . .
This baseball season promised so much to deliver this little.
The Astros lucked their way to yet another victory in Game 3, and these lucky dogs are now only a win away from going to their fourth fortunate World Series in six serendipitous years.
They've now beaten the Yankees three straight games in the ALCS and 8 of 10 times these two American League powerhouses have hooked up this year.
The Astros won all six games they've played this postseason after somehow lucking their way to 106 wins in the regular season.
And they're one victory away from knocking the Yankees out of the postseason derby for the fourth time in eight years.
The Astros . . . were lucky enough to play a near-perfect game and outplay the Yankees in every facet . . . And also lucky to be playing a team with a team with no .300 hitters this postseason (and five guys batting below .100), a DH who hasn't had a hit in a month and a rotation of three shortstops, two of whom barely played that key position one game in the bigs before this ALCS.
Can you believe how lucky these sons of a gun are?
No one knows how they do it. . . .
Sure, the Astros have reached six straight league championship series. But that's too small a sample size for me. I'm going to have to see them do it many more years before I start to consider whether I might believe some of it.
The wind undoubtedly aided the Astros in Game 2, and this time it was the short porch. Chas McCormick's two-run home run even struck the top of the wall before flying over. . . .
The Astros' luck seems to be a never-ending thing, as it's gone on all series, and really, over the eight years these teams have been facing each in October. . . .
The Yankees were hitting .172 this postseason entering the game. Never mind the 30 times they struck out in the first two games of this series, they keep hitting close enough to Astros for them to produce outs. . . .
Come to think of it, maybe the Astros aren't lucky.
Maybe it's just that the Yankees are extremely unlucky — to keep having to play the Astros.
Cristian Javier had one-hit the Yankees through 5.1 and was pulled after Anthony Rizzo reached on a walk. The Astros [leading 5-0] went to the bullpen for Judge, bringing out right-hander Hector Neris.
Judge struck out on three straight pitches, looking at a fastball for strike three. He walked back to the dugout to a chorus of boos. Judge went 0-for-4 against Javier, Neris and former Mets' pitcher Rafael Montero and the Yankees lost 5-0 to go down 3-0 in the series. . . .
This isn't the first time Judge has received a Bronx Cheer during the postseason. The slugger heard plenty of them in Game 2 of the ALDS against the Cleveland Guardians . . .
With fans eager to see their team . . . finally get over the Houston hump, they were expecting more from their record-breaking star. Judge is just 1-for-11 against the Astros through three games and 5-for-30 with 14 strikeouts and only a single walk in the playoffs overall. . . .
Judge looks more than "a little tired," according to an AL scout. The adrenaline can only do so much. It can't make up for altered timing and some of the other hangover-like effects that often plague hitters during slumps. . . .
To make matters worse, [Judge] may be playing some of his final games in pinstripes, set to become a free agent in just a few weeks. . . . These last few at-bats . . . could leave a negative impression on fans as he heads into an uncertain winter.
It's not an unreasonable request. All you want to do is watch the ballgame. But …
It's another of those systemic epidemics, no good reason for it, and easily fixed or treated — like a runny nose, a loose screw or John Smoltz. But it persists and even worsens as part of the plan.
Wednesday afternoon on Fox, Game 2 of the Phillies-Padres NLCS. Happy to have a game to watch. Initially. . . . Philly's Matt Vierling hit a high fly to right.
Clearly, right fielder Juan Soto, even while wearing sunglasses, lost the ball in the sun. As he ducked to avoid a beaning, the ball fell, a run scored, Vierling wound up on second.
It was nothing we hadn't seen before. It was self-evident, self-explanatory, not an uncommon occurrence in daylight baseball. . . .
But not these days, not with Smoltz and many like him in the booth. Smoltz did what he does, and what he has done since Fox hired him in 2014: He applied far more analysis to the episode than it was worth, again driving discriminate viewers batty before their fannies could crease an easy chair.
Ready for it? Here goes:
"Yeah, we talked about it, and that sun hit him in the absolute perfect spot at the last minute. He tried to shade it with the glove, but he can't pick it up. Sometimes you've got to get on the side of the sun, which is hard to do when it's directly pointing in your eyes. He tried everything he did. He had the sunglasses and it was unfortunate, really, for the Padres."
At that point Smoltz had to stop to draw a breath, but he wasn't done.
"It's the worst feeling in the world. I mean, you're trying your best to track that ball, and you've got to move and track it. And then, one, you look back to the ball and all you see is a glare, the sun, obviously."
Yes, obviously. Still, Smoltz wasn't done:
"The reason the right fielder, I think, has the hardest ability to do just this is that it's directly at him. He has no way to really shield it. The center fielder can shield it, he has the angles. Obviously, the left fielder can do the same thing. But the right fielder, based on where that sun is, looks like it's a direct impact."
In other words, Soto lost the ball in the sun.
And then back to Smoltz analyzing every pitch.
