Schadenfreude 358 (A Continuing Series)

Game 5
Dodgers - 000 050 020 - 7  7  0
Yankees - 311 001 000 - 6  8  3

YED!

2024 EDITION

Yankee Elimination Days

YED 2001 - November 4
YED 2002 - October 5
YED 2003 - October 25
YED 2004 - October 20
YED 2005 - October 10
YED 2006 - October 7
YED 2007 - October 8
YED 2008 - September 23
YED 2010 - October 22
YED 2011 - October 6
YED 2012 - October 18
YED 2013 - September 25
YED 2014 - September 24
YED 2015 - October 6
YED 2016 - September 29
YED 2017 - October 21
YED 2018 - October 9
YED 2019 - October 19
YED 2020 - October 9
YED 2021 - October 5
YED 2022 - October 23
YED 2023 - September 24
YED 2024 - OCTOBER 30

Bottoms up, motherfuckers!

There's No Escaping The Brutality Of This Yankees Failure
Mike Vaccaro, Post

This one will sting. This one will leave a mark. There will be days and nights in the weeks and months to come when this game is going to visit you – in your sleep, daydreaming in your office, lamenting with friends around a water cooler. . . .

The Yankees lost Game 5 of the 120th World Series last night, 7-6, and it is almost impossible to understand how that happened. . . . 

They led 5-0. Gerrit Cole threw four no-hit innings, at one point extending a two-game Yankees streak to 27 retired Dodgers in a row. He was everything he has always promised . . . The crowd at Yankee Stadium, 49,263 strong, was planning for a three-hour party, and then a night, Thursday, to catch their breath and soothe their voice boxes before Game 6 Friday. 

Before continuing a quest to heal that two-decade wound. 

Then, in an eyeblink, it was 5-5. 

And that was impossible to understand, too. Aaron Judge. . . dropped a fly ball. 

Wait. He did what? 

Yes. He dropped a fly ball, off Tommy Edman's bat. It was a Little League fly, too. If he sees that exact same ball a thousand times — no, make that 100,000 times — he catches it 99,999 of them. It was inexplicable. And then Anthony Volpe . . . bookended it with a poor throw to third on a ball in the hole. 

You can't give the White Sox five outs in an inning and expect to get away with it; you sure can't give a team with 108 wins like the Dodgers five outs. . . . [Cole] nearly got away with it. He struck out Gavin Lux . . . He struck out Shohei Ohtani . . . And then he got Mookie Betts to ground meekly to first. 

He was going to get out of it. 

Except he suffered a brain cramp at the worst possible moment. He failed to cover first base. . . .

(Follow-up: you REALLY can't give the Dodgers SIX outs and expect to get away with it.) 

They didn't get away with it. . . .

Now begins the long, endless offseason, one of the longest Yankees fans have endured in decades. . . . 

The end is cruel. The whole sport is cruel. . . .

"This," Gerrit Cole said, "is as bad as it gets."

Yankees' Star Power Couldn't Overcome Their Crushing Flaws In World Series

Jon Heyman, Post

The Yankees staged a keen competition in a tension-filled Game 5 of the World Series, and it was with themselves.

It was once again the Yankees' overwhelming talent vs. their underwhelming carelessness.

It was their skillfulness vs. their sloppiness.

Turns out their talent couldn't quite carry the day, which ended in devastating defeat and painful elimination as the Dodgers, very skilled yet significantly more solid, were crowned World Series champions. . . .

The Yankees were hoping to join the 2004 Red Sox as the only team to win a postseason series of any sort after falling behind 3-0 in games, which, you'll recall was done against the Yankees in the ALCS. But instead . . . their first Fall Classic appearance in 15 years ended in heartbreak.

The Yankees couldn't quite outplay their mistakes, blowing leads of 5-0 and 6-5. . . . [A]bject overall negligence did them in. . . .

Gerrit Cole pitched into the seventh without allowing an earned run — although there were five unearned runs from an unforgettable nightmare of a fifth inning.

That's when the Dodgers tied the score with the aid of errors by Judge and Anthony Volpe and a failure to record an out on a routine bases-loaded, two-out grounder by Mookie Betts to first base . . . on a play that could have kept the inning scoreless.

In the end, absentmindedness trumped ability.

Yankees' Inning From Hell Sent Their World Series Hopes Spiraling
Dan Martin, Post

It was the inning from hell, and it helped end the Yankees season.

The top of the fifth of Game 5 of the World Series started with the Yankees up 5-0 and Gerrit Cole tossing a no-hitter.

It ended with the game tied, and what had been a party at Yankee Stadium started to feel like a funeral . . .

Kiké Hernandez led off the inning with the Dodgers' first hit of the night, a single to right, and The Bronx faithful gave Cole a quiet cheer for his four no-hit innings.

That's when things got weird.

Aaron Judge . . . dropped a routine fly ball by Tommy Edman. . . .

Hernandez had gone back to first base, but reversed course and raced to second in time to beat Judge's throw.

It was Judge's first error of the year, either in the regular season or the playoffs. . . .

Then Will Smith sent a grounder to shortstop. Anthony Volpe went to his right and fielded it, but he bounced a rushed throw to third and Jazz Chisholm Jr. couldn't come up with it, so Edman was safe at third and the bases were loaded with no one out.

That's when Cole put his ace hat on . . . He whiffed Gavin Lux for the first out . . . Cole followed by striking out Shohei Ohtani . . . 

Just an out away from an incredible escape, Cole still had to get through Mookie Betts. . . .

Betts squibbed a grounder to first, and Anthony Rizzo, never the fastest of players, didn't charge the slow chopper.

Worse, Cole — who initially started moving to first to cover the base — stopped and just pointed at first base, thinking Rizzo could get there in time and didn't cover the base.

A hustling Betts easily beat Rizzo to the base. The infield hit made it 5-1, as Edman scored.

Instead of the inning being over and the Yankees up by five runs, World Series home-run machine Freddie Freeman became the seventh batter to the plate, and he drilled a two-run single to center.

Suddenly, it was 5-3, and Cole and the Yankees were teetering toward disaster.

But wait, it got worse.

Teoscar Hernandez came up and blasted a two-run double off the wall in center, a 404-foot shot that tied the game at 5-5.

What had seemed almost impossible to imagine as the fifth inning got underway was a reality.

Still, Cole remained on the mound as Tommy Kahnle, who blew the game for good in the eighth, began to get loose in the bullpen. . . .

In the end, Cole threw 38 pitches in the frame after needing just 49 pitches to get through the first four innings.

Gerrit Cole's Yankees Legacy Start All Caved In During Blunder-Filled Fifth Inning: 'Just Brutal'

Zach Braziller, Post

Gerrit Cole was cruising. The Yankees bats had come alive. It was 5-0 after four innings and the Dodgers didn't have a hit.

The World Series felt destined for Friday night in Los Angeles.

Then it all came crashing down . . . Defense played a major part, including his own failure to cover first base, but Cole also couldn't put away Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez in a big spot. . . .

Cole flushed [Is this an homage to George King III?] a five-run lead in their season-ending, 7-6 loss to the Dodgers at the Stadium on Wednesday night. . . .

"It's the worst feeling you can have. … It's just brutal." . . .

While errors by Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe on back-to-back plays enabled the Dodgers to load the bases with no outs, Cole was within one out of getting out of the jam after striking out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. 

Cole, however, failed to cover first base on a Mookie Betts roller to Anthony Rizzo, allowing the Dodgers' first run to score.

Cole said afterward that he misread the spin on the ball, thinking he could field it and took a poor angle. . . .

Cole couldn't finish off either Freeman or Hernandez, allowing two-strike hits to both that enabled the Dodgers to get even at 5-5. . . .

Cole couldn't make the five-run lead stand up. The Yankees are going home.

Yankees' Season Ends In Heartbreak As They Choke Away Game 5 Of World Series

Mark W. Sanchez, Post

The Yankees now hurdle into an offseason of uncertainty after a season of . . . far too many mistakes and ultimately yet more disappointment. . . .

Dave Roberts's group fought its way out of a five-run hole, with the hosts' help, and celebrated on the field in The Bronx in a dramatic, 7-6, Game 5 Yankees loss on Wednesday that was part heartbreaker and part self-inflicted head-shaker. . . .

Aaron Judge . . . will return but for what will be his 33-year-old season.

As (likely) will Gerrit Cole, who . . . will turn 35 in September.

Giancarlo Stanton will reach his 35th birthday next week. The core is aging, and maybe the window is beginning to close without a title. . . .

[T]hey left 12 on base, went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position . . .

In a season in which the Yankees continually attempted to out-hit their mistakes, those mistakes made the difference in an inning that will haunt this franchise. . . .

Such is how the Yankees' season died: Bemoaning what could have been . . . while watching what was — a World Series that slipped away.

World Series Debacle Shows Everything Wrong With Aaron Judge-Era Yankees

Joel Sherman, Post

From the first day of spring training to the last, nothing is more common in each camp than pitcher's fielding practice. . . .

Day after day. The routine. The monotony. . . . [N]one is more practiced than ground ball to first, pitcher gets over to cover. It is designed to make sure the most basic of plays is executed correctly.

So fittingly, it executed these 2024 Yankees — perhaps the most technically unsound team to ever get this far.

In a slapstick fifth inning in which the Yankees played all their greatest hits — or, more familiarly, errors — they still would have survived had Anthony Rizzo and Gerrit Cole completed a Baseball 101 play. But in the worst World Series blunder at first since perhaps the ball going by Billy Buckner, both made mistakes of omission.

And the Yankee season is over because of it . . .

The Yankees lost the first game of the World Series and the last game of the 2024 MLB season because they are bad at baseball. In those two games, they handed away outs and 90 extra feet like the kindest Santa in the world. . . .

[M]ultiple Yankees talked in a losing clubhouse about "mistakes" that doomed them as if they were not within the team's control to prevent. Since mid-February. And, really, longer than that.

These Yankees, after all, have been on a rinse, repeat cycle as to how they lose in the postseason during the Aaron Judge Era. Their fundamental maladies are overcome against inferior AL Central opponents, but when the degree of October difficulty rises, the Yankees crumble.

The Yankees were 31-9 (.775) against the AL Central (postseason included) this year and 71-65 (.522) against everyone else. They have played seven rounds against the AL Central in the playoffs since 2017, including two to win the AL pennant this year, and advanced through all seven. They have played eight rounds against everyone else and won only one, the one-game wild card in 2018 vs. the A's . . .

They won one World Series game this year — Game 4, when the Dodgers threw none of their main pitchers: The AL Central of strategies. . . .

"You have to limit mistakes," Judge said. "You don't give your opponent a chance to breathe."

The Yankees all but built an oxygen tent to revive the Dodgers . . .

[Judge] dropped a routine fly to center with one on and none out in the fifth. He said there was no reason for what was his first error all year. Anthony Volpe then spiked a ball that Chisholm could not corral at third and the bases were loaded . . . [Cole got two outs and Betts] squibbed [a] grounder to first.

Rizzo said he laid back on it because of the English on the ball, but attacking it would have allowed him to make the play unassisted. Cole said he initially broke as if to try to grab the grounder — which was not really that close to him — and that set him off on a bad pathway to cover first … and he just stopped. Neither made it to the bag. Betts did. An inning-ending groundout instead became an RBI single. . . .

The routine becoming not routine. The Yankees being the 2024 Yankees. . . .

The Yankees would actually take a 6-5 lead in the sixth, but it was an inning in which they had three walks and no hits. They drew eight walks from the second to eighth innings and that was the lone one that scored. They went 1-for-10 overall with runners in scoring position. . . .

[T]he story of the 2024 Yankees was finalized — beneficiaries of a favorable draw, talented enough to get to the World Series, but again not technically sound enough to beat a heavyweight opponent.

Yankees' Austin Wells Hit With Catcher's Interference Call In Brutal World Series Moment

Michael Blinn, Post

The Yankees' error-prone ways in Game 5 on Wednesday night at the Stadium didn't stop with their fifth-inning implosion.

Bombers backstop Austin Wells was tagged for catcher's interference in the eighth inning in a play that the Dodgers immediately took advantage of.

The Dodgers came into the inning trailing 6-5 but pounced on Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle, with Enrique Hernandez and Tommy Edman singling before Will Smith walked on four pitches to load the bases with no outs. . . .

[Facing Luke Weaver] Gavin Lux hit a sacrifice fly to score Hernandez.

That brought up Shohei Ohtani . . . [who] fouled off Weaver's 89.7 MPH changeup but nicked the webbing of Wells' mitt as he came around — and earned a trip to first due to interference.

The Yankees' challenge did not go their way, nor did the following at-bat, in which Mookie Betts sent a sac fly to center field, scoring Edman for a 7-6 lead.

Derek Jeter Hasn't Seen Anything Like This Yankees World Series Meltdown
Erich Richter, Post

This didn't happen in Derek Jeter's era.

In an inning that featured two errors on routine plays and another crushing gaffe, the Yankees blew a five-run lead to the Dodgers en route to a 7-6 defeat in an embarrassing close to their season.

"I don't know if I've ever quite seen an inning like this, especially in a World Series or postseason game." [Jeter] said . . . on Fox's postgame show. "The Yankees made some mistakes, you can't make mistakes against a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers. In that particular inning, you gave them six outs." . . .

Jeter's ex-Yankees teammate Alex Rodriguez, who was a part of the 2004 Yankees which blew a 3-0 lead to the Red Sox, [said] "This is one of the greatest meltdowns that I've ever seen in 40 years" . . .

With the year over and the sourest of tastes in their mouth, the Yankees have tons of question marks to answer this winter. . . .

Juan Soto heads to free agency and he said that the Yankees do not have the edge when it comes to re-signing him. 

What Went Wrong On Disastrous Yankees Play In Crushing World Series Moment

Will Zimmerman, Post

It was the debacle to end all debacles.

A miscommunication between Yankees ace Gerrit Cole and first baseman Anthony Rizzo on a routine ground ball contributed to one of the most cataclysmic innings in Yankees history on Wednesday, when the Bombers let Game 5 slip out of their hands . . .

The Yankees held a five-run lead at the top of the fifth inning and seemed poised to keep their World Series dreams alive.

That all came crashing down following a series of blunders, which included a botched throw to third base by shortstop Anthony Volpe and a muffed line-drive catch by Aaron Judge, allowing the Dodgers to creep back into the game.

With two outs and the bases loaded, Dodgers star Mookie Betts hit a grounder to first with Rizzo failing to charge while Cole — who initially ran toward the bag — stopped. . . .

"I looked up to flip [the ball to Cole] and, uh, that's what happened…" . . .

"Pitchers are always taught to get over, no matter what," Rizzo said. . . .

Aaron Judge Laments Crucial Mistake That Erased Breakout World Series Moment: 'Got To Make The Play'

Zach Braziller, Post

Aaron Judge . . . was unable to come up with a Tommy Edman line drive with a runner on and nobody out in the fifth inning, an error that led to a five-run frame for the Dodgers in their World Series-clinching, 7-6 victory over the Yankees in Game 5 in The Bronx on Wednesday night. . . .

Asked what went wrong, he said: "I just didn't make it."

Judge had company in the fifth. Anthony Volpe made an error immediately after and with a chance to get out of the inning unscathed, Gerrit Cole failed to cover first base on a slowly hit grounder by Mookie Betts to Anthony Rizzo.

The floodgates opened from there, but it all started with the Judge drop, as five unearned runs crossed against Gerrit Cole. . . .

[Judge] doubled in the eighth with one out and the Yankees down a run. But they couldn't push the tying run across. . . .

Instead of getting ready to board a plane back to Los Angeles, the Yankees' season ended Wednesday night. . . .

[Judge] hit .184 and struck out 20 times in 49 [postseason] at-bats. . . . October success has proven elusive for him. That trend continued Wednesday night.

"I think falling short in the World Series will stick with me til the day I die, probably," Judge said.