Aaron Judge has his playoff moment, but then so do Guardians with dramatic Game 3 walk-off win over Yankees in ALCS
New York Yankees pitcher Clay Holmes (35) walks to the dugout after Cleveland Guardians first base David Fry (6) hits a game winning 2 run homer in the 10th inning during Game 3 of the American League Championship Series against the Guardians at Progressive Field in Cleveland on Oct. 17, 2024 Credit: Newsday/William Perlman
CLEVELAND — A kid in the stands during Game 3 of the ALCS at Progressive Field on Thursday held up a sign:
“BELIEVELAND,” it read.
But did the kid still believe when the Yankees led the Guardians by two runs with two outs in the ninth?
If so, give that kid a hand.
Pinch hitter Jhonkensy Noel hit a game-tying homer off the previously impenetrable Luke Weaver.
Cleveland went on to take a dramatic 7-5 win on David Fry’s two-run walk-off homer off Clay Holmes in the 10th.
It was the first bullpen meltdown for the Yankees in this postseason. And the Yankees, who lead the best-of-seven series 2-1, lost despite major home runs heroics of their own.
Trailing 3-1 in the eighth, Aaron Judge hit a game-tying two-run home run. Giancarlo Stanton followed with a go-ahead blast to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead. Both homers came off elite (in the regular season) closer Emmanuel Clase.
Judge and Stanton went back-to-back and belly-to-belly. It was the kind of signature postseason moment Judge has been dreaming about since 2017. It was another example of prodigious postseason prowess by Stanton.
It just didn’t lead to a victory.
It all started with a walk to Juan Soto, which may have been the baseball gods’ way of giving us the theater of Clase vs. Judge. And giving Judge a chance to live up to his regular season credentials.
Clase had allowed five earned runs in 74 1/3 innings for a 0.70 ERA in the regular season. He saved 47 games. He may be the best current closer in baseball.
But Clase gave up a three-run homer to Kerry Carpenter of the Tigers in Cleveland’s 3-0 loss in Game 2 of the ALDS. Every reliever, even the greatest of them all in Mariano Rivera, can be beaten in the postseason.
It happened to Rivera in this ballpark, then called Jacobs Field, on a 1997 home run by Sandy Alomar Jr., who is now the Guardians’ first base coach.
Judge came in to the faceoff with a postseason-sized piano on his broad back. He was already 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. Even after hitting an important tack-on two-run home run in Tuesday’s 6-3 Yankees victory in Game 2, Judge was hitting .143 in this postseason.
Judge’s failures in previous playoffs followed him into the batter’s box.
So did his soon-to-be two-time AL MVP resume. But that’s the regular season. The playoffs are a different animal, as Clase and Judge can attest.
It was a classic at-bat between two of the game’s best. Clase got ahead of Judge 0-and-2 on a foul back and a swinging strike. Judge called timeout, and then Clase threw a ball low and outside.
All three pitchers were cutters at 99 miles per hour. Nasty, nasty and nasty.
The fourth pitch was another cutter at the same speed. It was belt-high — the belt height of the 6-7 Judge — on the outside corner.
Judge lined the ball to right. It carried into the stands. The score was 3-3.
It was not a typical high, far and gone Judge-ian blast. Judge’s majestic home run to center on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium had a launch angle of 37 degrees and went 414 feet. You could make a sandwich while waiting for it to come down.
The homer on Thursday had a launch angle of 18 degrees and went 356 feet. If you turned away for an instant, you missed it.
Stanton followed with a 390-foot go-ahead blast to just right of center on a 90-mph slider. That was after Stanton has spoiled three 99-mph cutters in a four-pitch span by fouling them off. Clase went to something else and lived to regret it.
The Yankees' dugout erupted. Players spilled onto the field in as pure an expression of joy as you will ever see from professional athletes.
Rookie Guardians manager Stephen Vogt made a futile attempt to claim Stanton had missed first during his glorious journey around the bases. After an unsuccessful appeal throw, Vogt asked for a replay review. Stanton did not miss the bag, so it was an odd and desperate move. And it failed.
The Yankees added an insurance run in the ninth on Gleyber Torres’ sacrifice fly.
In the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees were one out away from a 3-0 series lead.
Weaver, who had gotten the last out of the eighth, gave up a two-out double to Lane Thomas in the ninth.
Noel, a rookie from the Dominican Republic whose nickname is “Mr. Christmas,” launched the tying home run 404 feet into the leftfield stands.
Fry went 399 feet to left off Holmes in the 10th.
It was bedlam in Cleveland.
Sorry, Believeland.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
