Breaking down the wild moments of Yankees-Guardians Game 3

CLEVELAND — For nearly an hour Thursday night, the New York Yankees overcame a seemingly sloppy baseball battle to pull away in a World Series victory, in crowd-silenced, completely uncomfortable fashion.

Down by two runs with two outs in the eighth inning against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Yankees were tasked with solving baseball's best closer Emmanuel Claes to give themselves a 3-0 lead in the American League Championship Series. In 74 regular-season appearances, the Fireballer allowed five earned runs. The Detroit Tigers got to him once in the AL Division Series — before shutting them down again in multi-innings over the next two games. The Yankees' deficit appeared next to impossible to erase.

Then Aaron Judge blasted a low line drive that pierced through the air, over the right-field wall for a two-run home run. Two minutes later, Giancarlo Stanton crushed a slider over the center field wall to cut New York's lead to one run. The Yankees burst out of their dugouts in celebration. They killed the powerful class.

Then, well, a game bordering on absurd to give us one of the most memorable games in recent postseason history, a 7-5 Cleveland victory in 10 innings.

“It was an incredible game for both sides. All the emotions, the ups and downs, the back and forth, you name it,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “If there's an emotion, we've all felt it on both sides.”

roller coaster. Heavyweight fight. Insert cliché here. It was a classic baseball game. Here are six of the game's biggest moments — with potential wins before each turn — to illustrate the madness.

Two outs in the top of the eighth inning
Cleveland leads 3-1
Probability of winning: 93.2% Cleveland

Moments before Judge's at-bat against Clays, when Guardians right-hander Hunter Gaddis pitched around Soto. Gaddis, whose 5% walk rate during the regular season was tied for 14th among relievers, issued a two-out, four-pitch walk to Soto, and none of the pitches were particularly close. Vogt then replaced Gaddis with Clase.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he doesn't believe Gaddis is staying around Soto. The judge said he had no idea. Regardless, the sequence sets up a marquee matchup. Judge vs. Class. Power vs. Power. The world's best hitter against the world's best reliever.

The conflict leans toward class early on. The right-hander jumps on Judge with a cutter down the middle that Judge fouls and lands a chop. Judge then took a 99 mph cutter off the plate before Claes dotted the outside corner with another 99 mph cutter.

“He just went with it,” Stanton said of Judge. “It was unbelievable. It wasn't a bad pitch. It was low and far, on the black. And he does what he does.”

What the judge was barreling baseball. It traveled 109.9 mph off the bat and 356 away, landing just above the wall and bouncing into the stands as Judge ran to first base. tie game

“I thought it was low,” the judge said. “So, you know, my first thought is try to stay on second base. Hopefully Juan can score or he's on third base. But in that situation try to get to second base for the Big G to come in.”

Two outs in the top of the eighth inning
The game is tied 3-3
Probability of winning: 59.9% Cleveland

Like his teammate, Stanton fell behind 0-2. He fouled a 91 mph slider, swung through a 100 mph cutter and fouled a cutter up the middle. Two pitches later, he fouled off a 93 mph slider over the plate. Those two pitches stuck with him.

“He was taking cutters and sliders in, so there was one out over the plate,” Stanton said. “And I missed a couple over the plate, so I was able to go to third.”

The third was War's seventh pitch, a 90 mph slider that caught too much of the plate. Stanton hit 85 mph — the hardest by a player on either side Thursday. It bounced off the bat at 106.1 mph and deposited 390 feet from home plate.

“I think I threw a right fist pump, like shot,” Boone said. “But you're right in the game. …You kind of stick with it later on. But you definitely feel the power of a few shots like that.”

And just like that, the Yankees had a lead. It was the first time Clay had hit multiple home runs in 326 career games, postseason included. New York was three outs from pulling within a win of its first World Series appearance in 15 years. It was a stunning turn of events. And it had just begun.

Bottom of the ninth inning, two outs
Yankees lead 5-3
Probability of winning: 98.5% New York

Luke Weaver, called on for a four-out save, danced out of a two-on, two-out jam in the eighth inning by striking out David Frye. Then, after Anthony Rizzo committed an error to start the bottom of the ninth, he launched a nifty 1-6-3 double play to squash Cleveland's momentum.

He was at least four outs out of his fourth straight postseason appearance. It looked imminent when he went 0-2 on Lane Thomas after a double play. But suddenly he lost speed. The next three pitches were uncontested and Thomas took them for full counts. The sixth pitch of the at-bat was a 95 mph fastball that Thomas hooked over the long left-field wall.

“You get to 0-2 and you try to do a little bit more,” Weaver said. “Thomas has a good at-bat out there, and, yeah, the moment starts to get a little bigger. So just trying to take a step back and it didn't work out what I needed to in that moment tonight.”

Bottom of the ninth inning, two outs
Yankees lead 5-3
Probability of winning: 95.4% New York

After the game, Vogt was clear about his motivation for sending Jonkensi Noel to pinch hit for Daniel Snyman: “I mean, he pinch hit to hit a homer,” Vogt said. “So we sent him there.” And, boy, did they deliver what they called a “big Christmas”.

After taking another uncontested pitch out of the strike zone, Noel jumped on a fat changeup over the heart of the plate and left no doubt. He smoothly flipped his bat to the side as he made second contact to tie the game. Panic rains around him. He, at least for the moment, effectively saved the Guardians season.

“It really felt like I let the team down there, let myself down,” Weaver said. “It's baseball, things like that happen. One twist of an arm and it feels a little devastating. We're still in a good position. It looks like there's some momentum, but they got it. It was a crazy game. The bats were hot, and the ball. It was flying out of the park.

Weaver hasn't given up a home run or multiple runs since Sept. 2 — his last appearance before becoming the Yankees' primary closer.

“It hurts a little more, yeah,” Weaver said. “It hurts a little more knowing how hard they worked to get the game to where it was. It hurts even more knowing I was 0-2, one pitch away from a big double play. Yeah, it all stinks. We It hurts more knowing how close I was, how big 3-0 I was [lead] But that's life. I've been through a lot of failure to know that things don't always go the way we want them to.”

Top of the tenth inning, one out
Tie game, 5-5
Probability of winning: 50.8% New York

The Yankees were threatening to take a quick lead when Stanton drew a one-out walk to bring in Jazz Chisholm Jr., who had walked and singled in his previous two plate appearances. This time, the Yankees third baseman hit a chopper into the hole at second base that was destined to leak through the infield.

That is until Guardian second baseman Andres Gimenez, to his left, somehow snagged the baseball in shallow right field, twisted it around and made a jump throw that landed on his backside. It one-hopped to first baseman Josh Naylor, who stretched his left leg to the limit only to complete the impossible out to first base.

The play, reminiscent of the kind Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar produced in his three seasons as Cleveland's second baseman at the turn of the century, baffled the Yankees' rally.

“Andres Gimenez is the best infielder on the planet,” Vogue said. “He was, and he will be. He makes plays that wow us every day it seems.”

Bottom of the 10th inning, two outs
Tie game, 5-5
Probability of winning: 62.7% Cleveland

3 hours and 52 minutes into the night, Cleveland's Frye launched an errant 1-2 sinker, which left Yankees reliever Clay Holmes over the plate and into the seats beyond the left-field wall.

“I just told God, 'Hey, man, take it,'” Frye said. “It's a tough matchup. Just try to have fun. You take the at-bat, get back in the count and get a pitch up in the zone and luckily it goes out.”

The Yankees, up to that point, were 196-1 in their postseason history when leading by more than one run in the ninth inning or later, according to ESPN Research. In that situation they are just another loss? Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS … against the Guardians.

“We're supposed to go out there and do our job,” Holmes said. “That's our job, to go out there and close things out. Our hitters did a great job of putting us in position, and we didn't just make pitches. But our expectation was to go out there and get zero.”

It was Frye's second home run of the postseason, and both were huge. The first was a two-run home run in Game 4 of the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers and the Guardians facing elimination. That home run saved the Guardians' season before they bounced back for another round. Time will tell if Thursday's performance will do the same.