Yankees quickly go from bubbly to just flat
The Yankees bench looks on in the ninth inning in Game 1 of the ALCS at Minute Maid Park in Houston on Oct. 19, 2022. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
HOUSTON
The day after a giddy Bronx celebration, the champagne rinsed away less than 24 hours earlier, the Yankees returned to a harsh reality in Game 1 of the ALCS at Minute Maid Park.
They still can’t beat the Astros.
And this time, coming off the exhausting series win over the pesky Guardians, the Yankees weren’t exactly at their best, either. Out of high-leverage relievers, and switching to a rusty Matt Carpenter in the DH spot, manager Aaron Boone was left trying to topple the AL’s top seed with leaps of faith and a lucky punch.
That’s not going to work against these Astros. Despite a roster makeover, and a new lineup twist that featured Giancarlo Stanton playing leftfield for the first time in nearly three months, it was the same lousy feeling for the Yankees in a 4-2 opening loss.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. The ageless Justin Verlander shook off some early traffic to strike out 11 over six innings (103 pitches) and the Yankees whiffed 17 times overall, including seven combined Ks from Carpenter and Josh Donaldson.
What made things worse was the Astros outmuscling the Yankees at their own power game — and feasting on Boone’s meager bullpen options to do so. Yuli Gurriel and Chas McCormick both went deep off Clarke Schmidt in the sixth inning and Jeremy Pena took Frankie Montas off the train tracks in leftfield to open the seventh.
So why was Schmidt being trusted to keep the Astros in check? And what the heck was Montas, a starter-by-trade, doing in a high-leverage spot after not pitching in three weeks due to a shoulder injury? Boone even used Miguel Castro (remember him?) for the eighth.
The short answer for those moves is that basically everyone else was burned out from surviving the Guardians — Wandy Peralta, Clay Holmes, Jonathan Loaisiga. It was akin to the Yankees fighting the Astros with a pitching arm tied behind their back, and Minute Maid Park in the ALCS, isn’t the most opportune time for experimentation.
“You’re hoping to carve out some roles for guys and obviously we’re in a situation with what we just went through where the guys we’ve leaned on heavily are going to be more in winning situations [for Wednesday],” Boone said. “So we knew it was going to be a slog kind of getting through those middle innings.
“It was good to see Clarke come in in some traffic in as tough a situation as you can be in in the middle of their lineup and get through it. But then the two-strike mistakes hurt him. Frankie hangs the breaking ball to Peña there. The good thing about it is he answered right back with the heart of their order and I thought executed well.”
That’s Boone. The king of silver linings. The Astros play pinball with his bullpen, turning a 1-1 tie into an 0-1 series deficit on three violent swings, and Boone makes sure to pump up his bruised relievers anyway. Schmidt took a blowtorch to the game by hanging an 0-and-2 slider to Gurriel leading off the sixth inning. He launched it into the Crawford Boxes atop the leftfield out-of-town scoreboard. One out later, with the sellout crowd of 41,487 still buzzing, the No. 8 hitter Chas McCormick smacked a flat sinker over the right-centerfield wall.
As for Montas, freshly added to the ALCS roster, the third pitch of his return was a slider up to Pena — the same young shortstop prototype the Yankees are dreaming on — hammered it off the train tracks high above leftfield to put the Astros up, 4-1.
The Astros’ indoor fireworks display made Wednesday’s result that much more demoralizing for the Yankees, who where outmuscled at their own game. Harrison Bader won the longest drive contest — his second-inning homer off Verlander traveled 411 feet, and it was his fourth in six playoffs games this month. Rizzo also went deep into the Astros’ bullpen with two outs in the eighth, but unlike the Yankees, Houston’s relief corps held together long enough.
With the tying runs on in the eighth inning, closer Ryan Pressly struck out Carpenter, who whiffed for the fourth time and did not provide the boost at DH the Yankees were shooting for by moving Stanton back to leftfield for his first appearance there since July 21. The Yankees got all they could have hoped for from Jameson Taillon, the default starter for Game 1, in getting into the fifth inning with the score tied. But it’s going to take more than adrenaline and silver linings to knock off their AL nemesis.
“After nine innings, you have to sit back and ask yourself, did we do enough as a team to put ourselves in a position to win a baseball game,” Bader said. “And quite frankly, I think we did. It just didn’t shake out our way. But moving forward, it’s a seven-game set for a reason.”
That format hasn’t helped much historically against the Astros, who have eliminated the Yankees three times in the last seven seasons. And Wednesday’s Game 1 loss felt too much like a disturbing continuation of that trend.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
