Schadenfreude 353 (A Continuing Series)

Guardians Rally For Improbable Comeback To Sink Yankees In Game 3 Crusher
Greg Joyce, Post

The first two games of the ALCS lacked for drama.

So the Yankees and Guardians filled the final three innings of Game 3 with more than enough to make up for it, which ultimately left the Yankees needing to get back up off the mat from the gut punch they took when they were one strike away from a 3-0 series lead.

After the teams traded haymakers in the form of stunning home runs in the eighth and ninth innings, David Fry delivered the knockout punch with a two-run homer off Clay Holmes in the 10th inning to lift the Guardians to a 7-5 win on Thursday night at Progressive Field. . . .

After being one strike away from being one win away [Seriously?!?] from advancing to their first World Series since 2009, the Yankees head into Friday's Game 4 with a 2-1 series lead. . . .

Weaver . . . has given up home runs in back-to-back games. . . . Weaver and Holmes . . . faltered while pitching for the seventh time in the Yankees' seventh playoff game, though both insisted they were OK physically. . . .

Weaver came on to record the final out of the eighth and got ahead 0-2 to Lane Thomas with two outs in the ninth. Thomas battled back to a full count and doubled before Weaver left a changeup down the middle — he said it slipped out of his hand — and Noel clobbered it for a game-tying shot.

Then with two outs and a runner on third in the bottom of the 10th, Holmes then left a sinker up to Fry that he clobbered, sending the crowd into a frenzy. . . .

Luke Weaver, Clay Holmes Implode As Yankees' Bullpen Falters In Playoff Rarity
Ryan Dunleavy, Post

The Yankees trotted out their Bizarro Bullpen in a heartbreaking loss. 

Seldom-used Tim Hill and Tim Mayza got big outs with runners on base. 

Workhorses Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes gave up big home runs with runners on base. 

And the Yankees went from one strike away from celebrating a comeback win to the shock of a 7-5 walk-off loss Thursday to the Guardians in the 10th inning of Game 3 . . .

The Yankees seemed to be in a great spot after back-to-back home runs by Judge and Giancarlo Stanton claimed a 4-3 lead — and they were until Weaver's first blown save since assuming the closer's role in early September. 

Lane Thomas doubled off the top of the wall after working out of an 0-2 count with two outs in the ninth. Johnsky Noel followed with a pinch-hit, game-tying, two-run home run. . . .

Holmes — the demoted closer . . . — allowed a leadoff single in the 10th and two-out walk-off home run to David Fry. . . .

"I probably got a little quick there with the sinker and threw it the one spot I couldn't throw it," Holmes said. "If it's a good sinker down and way below the zone, it's probably a more favorable outcome."

Guardians Have A New Energy After All-Time Thriller
Mike Vaccaro, Post

. . . It was 4-3, Yankees. By the bottom of the ninth, it was 5-3. . . . [T]he Yankees have been doing this kind of thing since Calvin Coolidge was president. 

Now they'd done it again. 

The Guardians were deflated. They were dead. Their dugout was a morgue, their ballpark a library. [Maybe they read some books about how the Yankees often choke when thinking of being up 3-0] Luke Weaver — the Yankees' version of Clase — had two outs, none on, bottom of the ninth. Lane Thomas hit one off the wall in left, and it felt like the worst kind of tease for the locals. 

Then Jhonkensy Noel stepped to the plate. His nickname is Big Christmas. And there won't be a more welcome present under any tree in northeast Ohio than the one he delivered in the bleak darkness of this Cleveland night. 

And if you listened close enough, you could hear the ruckus on the Jersey Turnpike. It was 5-5. It seemed impossible. It felt unreal. But soon it was the 10th inning. Soon an ex-Met named Andres Gimenez was making one of the most breathtaking plays you'll ever see, robbing Jazz Chisholm of a hit, robbing the Yankees of first-and-third, one out. 

And soon, David Fry was stepping to the plate. 

Fry, whose late-inning home run last week helped ensure that the Yankees were in Cleveland on this night, and not Detroit. Fry, kept out of the lineup by Vogt in favor of Kyle Manzardo at the start, but who now stared at Clay Holmes, man on third, two outs, bottom of the 10th, looking for a ball he could drive. 

"And I got a ball I could drive," he said. 

When it landed, Progressive Field rattled to its girders and struts. When it landed, the Guardians had a 7-5 victory, had sliced the Yankees' lead to 2-1 in this best-of-seven American League Championship Series, and had performed CPR on an entire city and its baseball season. 

"That," Fry said, "was fun." . . .

It's less so if you're a team in a stunned loser's clubhouse, listening to a jamboree bleed through the walls, a celebration you'd have bet your life was going to take place inside these walls. . . .

Yankees Must Prove They Can Get Off The Mat After Gut-Wrenching Game 3 Loss
Joel Sherman, Post

It wasn't three-games-to-none. But it was just about as close as you can get. . . .

Luke Weaver was ahead of Lane Thomas 0-2 with two outs in the ninth and the Yankees up two runs.  . . .

[I]t was going to be as stirring a victory as existed in the Aaron Era — Judge and Boone. One strike to three-and-oh in this fashion. The doorstep of the World Series.

Then Luke Weaver gave up a two-run homer to Jhonkensy Noel after allowing a full-count Thomas double. Tie score. Then Clay Holmes surrendered a two-out, two-run walkoff shot to David Fry in the 10th. And if you want, close your eyes Yankees fans, this all occurred on the 20th anniversary of the Yanks on the precipice of sweeping the Red Sox in the ALCS and then Dave Roberts stole a base and triggered what was the greatest comeback in MLB history as Boston won four straight, ended The Curse and won its first championship since 1918.

Yeah, these Guardians are not those Red Sox. But these Yankees are not those tough-minded champion Yankees. And now it is not three-nothing. It is two games to one, Yankees still ahead, but both teams having bullpens on fumes, which potentially opens the door to funky stuff. . . .

[W]hat Weaver failed to close opened what the Yankees did not want to see open . . . — an underdog suddenly with more of a fighting chance. An underdog who might not have The Curse, but has gone the longest of any franchise (since 1948) of last winning a title. . . .

The Yankees did not play well . . . They botched four balls at first base, two by Jon Berti contributed to runs and two were by Anthony Rizzo, who was put in for defensive reasons. Jose Trevino started at catcher for the first time this postseason and Cleveland went 3-for-3 in steals off him. And Trevino . . . continued the Yankees' unpardonable baserunning blunders by getting picked off. . . .

Weaver and Holmes have pitched in every playoff game. And Weaver was facing Thomas for the third time in three games. He bemoaned not putting Thomas away as the key at-bat, not the tying homer from Noel that followed. An inning later, Holmes left a sinker up to Fry and it was the Guardians who won with the power of three two-run homers. . . .

[T]he Yankees were so tantalizingly close to being up three-oh.

One strike away from one win [Jesus, this is so pathetic.] to their first World Series appearance in 15 years.

And now?

Yankees' First-Base Weakness Cost Them As Anthony Rizzo, Jon Berti Struggle
Dan Martin, Post

The Yankees entered the postseason with a problem at first base, thanks to Anthony Rizzo's fractured fingers on his right hand and the inexperience of his replacements at the position. . . .

With lefty Matt Boyd on the mound for Cleveland, Aaron Boone went with righty-hitting Jon Berti at first after the veteran infielder performed well there in the ALDS despite never having played the position before. 

And though Berti didn't make any errors before being replaced by Rizzo . . . in the bottom of the eighth, he botched several plays, including one in the third inning that led to a run. 

Rizzo, too, had a rough couple of innings after he came into the game, including on a Will Brennan double that got by him and into right field with one out in the eighth and an error on a Jose Ramirez grounder to open the ninth. . . .

Boone also started Jose Trevino behind the plate for the first time since the regular season, again going with Trevino's right-handed bat — and keeping the slumping Austin Wells' lefty bat out of the starting lineup. 

Trevino . . . got picked off first and allowed Cleveland to steal a pair of bases. . . .

[Wells] is hitless in his past 20 at-bats in the playoffs, but he and Rizzo figure to be back in the lineup for Friday's Game 4 . . .

Yankees' Catching Shakeup Provided Spark Before Burning Out Just As Quickly
Dan Martin, Post

The Yankees haven't gotten much out of their catchers this postseason — because Austin Wells has seen his late-season slump extend into the playoffs. . . .

Wells pinch-hit for Trevino [1-for-22 in prior postseasons] to lead off the [eighth] inning and whiffed twice in what turned into a devastating 7-5, 10-inning loss. . . .

Despite Wells' lengthy offensive downturn — which includes a current 0-for-19 stretch with nine strikeouts — Boone remains high on the catcher . . .

[T]he slump goes back to Wells' last 14 games of the regular season, when he went 3-for-45 . . .