We’ve all been there before, whether it is baseball or any other sport when the lights are at their brightest, usually there’s a real and tangible sign that for one team, the end of the road is here and you may as well just go ahead and get it over with while the team with real deal aspirations can continue on to their path to a title. It sure seems like that’s the case in the NLCS, where the Dodgers have taken a commanding 3-1 series lead and have scored eight runs or more in each of their three wins so far. They aren’t just beating the Mets whenever they win, they’re usually stomping them out in the process. Baseball playoff series are known for turning on the drop of a dime but it sure seems that one will need an absolute doozy of a hairpin turn in order for the Mets to recover.
Meanwhile, it definitely seemed like the clock was moving really close to hitting midnight for the Cleveland Guardians. The first two games of the ALCS were not the best games of baseball that you’ll ever see and that was largely because it looked like Cleveland really just wasn’t on the level of the New York Yankees. However, for the first seven innings of Game 3 the Guardians looked determined to make sure that this would actually be a series instead of a processional. Cleveland had a 3-1 lead with two in the eighth inning of Game 3 Thursday night and then turned to dominant closer Emmanuel Clase to deal with Aaron Judge in order to hopefully start up a four-out save.
As it turned out, Clase only ended up getting one of those four outs that the Guardians wanted him to get because it looked like this was the moment where we could just go ahead and start getting Yankee Stadium ready for the World Series. Over the next 11 pitches, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton seemingly informed Cleveland that there’s levels to this and that they weren’t on that level as the two titans of New York’s lineup went back-to-back with homers. Stanton’s dinger put the Yankees ahead 4-3 in front of a stunned crowd at Progressive Field. Clase had been incredible all season but it really doesn’t matter when one team seems built for this moment and the other team just isn’t, right? How else could you explain the fact that a guy who had only given up two home runs and five earned runs total over 74.1 innings all season all of a sudden gives up two home runs and three earned runs over 11 pitches at home?
Once the Yankees added on an insurance run in the top of the ninth inning, it really felt like the clock was at 11:55 and about to strike midnight on the season for the Guardians. The Yankees had proven they were ready to return to the big time and Cleveland was about to fall into that dreaded 3-0 hole that so few teams have gotten themselves out of over the course of baseball history.
But, that’s when the script suddenly changed. Lane Thomas’s two-out double after a backbreaking double play that wiped out the leadoff runner should’ve just been a nice memory to end on before the pinch-hitting Jhonkensy Noel popped out or something in order to end the frustrating night for Cleveland. Instead, Christmas came early for Cleveland.
Even with that home run sending Progressive Field into delirium, it still seemed like the Yankees would just shrug it off and get back on track. New York got two men on in the tenth inning against Pedro Avila but Avila snuffed out the scoring threat by striking out Anthony Volpe to end the inning right then and there. Then the Guardians opened up their half of the tenth inning with all of the intentions of winning the game via A-B-C baseball. Bo Naylor led off with a single off of Clay Holmes. Two productive outs later, Naylor was at third base with David Fry at the plate.
If the “script” was still intact at this point, then this probably would’ve been the time for Fry to go down swinging and we’d get a marathon game that would eventually and finally end with the Yankees somehow closing it out. However, we really should’ve taken the hint that the script that we’ve all grown used to seeing was in tatters and David Fry gave us all a very loud reminder of that fact.
Needless to say, that was the best game of the Postseason so far. Four late home runs from both teams gave us neutral fans everything we could’ve asked for and then some. Most importantly, it also ensured that Cleveland now has something of a pulse in this series. Those first two games were very rough for them and it was looking like heartbreak was on the horizon after Judge and Stanton very nearly crushed their Postseason aspirations. The projections for this series are still extremely bleak for the Guardians but now they’ve got hope and proof of concept that they can, in fact, win some games in this series. Just like pettiness, hope can serve as fuel as well.
