Yankees blow four-run lead, then score two in ninth to take 3-1 ALCS lead over Guardians, move one win from World Series berth

CLEVELAND — The Yankees and Guardians traded “haymakers,’’ in the words of Aaron Boone, on Thursday night in a classic Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

All of those blows — two homers apiece by the clubs from the eighth through 10th innings — came off overtaxed relievers running on fumes.

A similar script played out Friday night, but despite blowing a four-run lead, the Yankees survived this time, again getting to Emmanuel Clase and scoring two runs in the ninth inning in a wild 8-6 win in front of 35,263 at Progressive Field.

“Last night was in the past,” said Juan Soto, whose two-run homer in the first inning Friday immediately showed the Yankees had no hangover effect from the brutal 7-5 loss the night before. “We tried to forget about it. We focused on today’s game, and that’s what we did as a whole team, and we came through.”

Coming through the way they did gave the Yankees a three-games-to-one lead in the series and put them one win away from their first World Series appearance since 2009, also the year of the franchise’s last title.

Carlos Rodon, terrific in a Game 1 victory, will start Game 5 on Saturday night with a chance to clinch the pennant.

“It feels like nothing until we get it done,” said Giancarlo Stanton, whose fourth homer of the postseason, a three-run shot in the sixth inning, gave the Yankees a 6-2 lead. “As far as I’m concerned, we haven’t done [anything]. We’ll enjoy this for now, but we’ve got to get it done tomorrow.”

Anthony Rizzo, who made yet another poor defensive play in the eighth that allowed the Guardians to tie the score at 6-6, led off the ninth with a single against Clase, who had allowed back-to-back homers by Aaron Judge and Stanton in the eighth inning Thursday night.

Jon Berti pinch ran for Rizzo and went to third on a single by Anthony Volpe, who stole second. Austin Wells, who was dropped from fourth to eighth in the batting order and homered in the second to make it 3-1, struck out. But with the infield in, Alex Verdugo hit a soft grounder to short that Brayan Rocchio booted for an error. Berti scored for a 7-6 lead and Gleyber Torres smacked an RBI single to center for the same two-run advantage the Yankees took into the bottom of the ninth on Thursday night.

It was another winning effort — which this time resulted in an actual win — against Clase, who was the best closer in the game during the regular season, posting a 0.61 ERA.

But as has been the case in this series — and others in both leagues as more and more teams deploy the same relievers game after game, which allows hitters to gain familiarity with them and taxes the relievers — the aura surrounding those high-leverage relievers dissipates.

“You have your approach, and I feel like everyone in this locker room’s really confident in sticking to that,” Volpe said. “Obviously, he’s [Clase] the best in the game, so you’re not always going to be successful, but I feel like everyone’s committed and we feel like we know what we’re going to see and we can anticipate and we know how it [Clase’s famed cutter] moves and we know what he’s going to try to attack you with. It’s just whether you do it [succeed] or not. But that’s baseball. He could come in tomorrow and strike everyone out and no one makes contact.”

With Aaron Boone trying to stay away from Luke Weaver — who pitched the first seven games of the postseason and allowed pinch hitter Jhonkensy Noel’s tying two-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning Thursday — it fell on Tommy Kahnle to close.

Kahnle, who pitched 1 2⁄3 innings the night before and who appeared in five of the first seven playoff games, struck out Lane Thomas looking but walked Noel (who had flied out to the base of the leftfield wall against Mark Leiter Jr. in a three-run seventh, just missing a go-ahead three-run homer). Andres Gimenez flared a single to right, but Kahnle got Bo Naylor to fly softly to center and Rocchio to ground to second to end it.

After Cleveland moved within 6-5 in the eventh on Jose Ramirez’s RBI double and Josh Naylor’s two-run double off Clay Holmes, Bo Naylor led off the eighth with a double and went to third on a grounder to short by Rocchio, but Steven Kwan popped to second for the second out. Leiter got David Fry to bounce one back to the mound, but he couldn’t control the ball, chased it toward the first-base line and made an awkward scoop to Rizzo at first. Rizzo, trying to make a bread-basket catch, dropped the ball, which tied it at 6-6. Leiter was charged with an error.

“Obviously, last night was a really tough loss,” Boone said. “No doubt in my mind we’d come out ready to roll, ready to turn the page, and right out of the gate, Gleyber gets on, Soto, homer, we’re off and running. Luis Gil does his job [four innings, two runs], and I thought we played an excellent game. Not a perfect game, but a gritty, tough, winning game.”