Yankees win Game 3 on Giancarlo Stanton's home run, take 2-1 lead over Royals in ALDS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The veteran slugger, all too quiet the first two games of the series, broke out in a big way.

No, not Aaron Judge.

Giancarlo Stanton.

The 34-year-old with bad legs, which have limited him in recent years almost exclusively to DH duties and made him a liability on the bases, had three hits Wednesday night, including a towering go-ahead homer in the eighth inning. It lifted the Yankees to 3-2 victory over the Royals in Game 3 of the ALDS in front of 40,312 at Kauffman Stadium.

“We were all saying it in the dugout when he came up for that AB, it was like, he's about to hit a homer here,” said Clarke Schmidt, who retired 13 of the first 16 batters he faced before allowing two runs in the fifth inning. “You just kind of feel like he's going to do damage when he goes up there.”

Stanton’s one-out blast off lefthander Kris Bubic on a 3-and-1 slider, which carried 417 feet to left, snapped a tie at 2 and put the Yankees on their way to having a chance to close out the best-of-five series Thursday night behind ace Gerrit Cole.

“Just hit the ball hard,” Stanton said of his approach. “You can't go up trying to hit a homer. But you put yourself on time, and yeah, bat through the zone on time, and it was a good shot.”

Stanton, who came into the night 1-for-8 with a walk and two strikeouts in the series, finished 3-for-5 with two RBIs.

“Can't put all that work in and have zero results, so I'm just glad I was working on the right things and was able to do something tonight,” said Stanton, who took early BP, something he typically does before the first game of most road series as he likes to get a feel for the ballpark’s backdrop and how the ball will carry.

Stanton came into the night a career .250 hitter in the postseason but with 11 homers and a .916 OPS. He now has 12 homers and 27 RBIs in 30 career playoff games, including 26 RBIs in his last 24 games in October.

“He's a killer,” Aaron Boone said. “I just admire how well he's able to focus in these big moments and just go to a different place mentally. Again, the at-bat on the home run was phenomenal. I think he went up there to do that and off a really tough reliever in Bubic, who's a neutral guy that gets righties and lefties out. I thought he laid off all the right pitches and got the one he was looking for and didn't miss it.”

After the DH’s sixth-inning single, the Royals, somewhat remarkably, seemed to lose track of the 6-6, 245-pound Stanton, who produced the most surprising postseason stolen base in years.

“Probably better than the homer, to be honest,” Stanton said with a smile of his teammates’ reaction to his first career stolen base in the playoffs and first overall since 2020.

Judge's slow October start continued. He went 0-for-4 and is 1-for-11 in the first three games.

Closer Luke Weaver, brought on with one out in the eighth, allowed two hits in the inning but got out of it, then set down three straight in the ninth to finish the five-out save.

Weaver was the third Yankees reliever to follow a solid Schmidt, who allowed two runs, four hits and a walk over 4 2/3 innings. Clay Holmes’ standout series continued with 1 1/3 scoreless innings and Tommy Kahnle produced 1 1/3 scoreless of his own.

“Complete confidence in them,” Schmidt said of the bullpen.

Seth Lugo threw one of the best games against the Yankees this season by any opposing pitcher back on Sept. 10 at the Stadium, striking out 10 and allowing three hits over seven scoreless innings of a 5-0 victory. But he wasn’t close to that dominant Wednesday. Lugo, while OK, allowed two runs, two hits and four walks over five innings.

The Yankees got on the board in the fourth, scoring on Stanton’s RBI double, which came off his bat at 114.1 mph. Soto’s sacrifice fly in the fifth made it 2-0.

The Royals tied it with a two-out rally in the bottom half. Adam Frazier started it with an infield single and Kyle Isbel, the No. 9 hitter, rocked a full-count cutter off the wall in left for an RBI double. Massey then lined one to the gap in right-center where Soto made a diving attempt but just missed, the ball rolling to the wall for an RBI triple that tied it at 2.

It stayed that way until Stanton’s moment in the eighth, which Chisholm in the on-deck circle had a perfect view of.

“From the first at-bat to the last at-bat, I could see how locked in he was,” Chisholm said. "I expected a big day from him today."

Chisholm was booed at an Alex Rodriguez-like level all game.In Chisholm’s case the result of his “they just got lucky” comment after the Royals’ win in Game 2.