The Guardians scored two in the top of the tenth to beat the Yankees
THE NEW YORK The ALDS now consists of three games. In Game 2 against the New York Yankees on Friday afternoon, the Cleveland Guardians prevailed 4-2 (box score) after 10 innings thanks to Oscar Gonzalez and a strong bullpen outing. The series is even after one game as it travels to Cleveland on Saturday night.
Giancarlo Stanton’s first-inning home run gave New York an early 2-0 advantage, but the Guardians recovered to equalise the score and then took the lead in the tenth inning with a few poor pop-ups. The bullpen for Cleveland limited the Yankees to just one hit over 4 1/3 innings.
Stanton homered after he should have walked
In the first inning, Jeremie Rehak, the home plate umpire, gave Shane Bieber a gift call (or so he thought). Even though his 3-1 cutter to Giancarlo Stanton was slightly off the plate and below the zone, it was still ruled a strike.
Austin Hedges, a talented pitch framer for the Guardians, either snatched a strike or Rehak completely missed the call. In any case, the decision provided Bieber a respite and a second opportunity to retire Stanton and conclude the first inning. No, he didn’t. Stanton hit a two-run home run in the short right field porch on the following pitch, giving the team a 2-0 advantage.
The following batter, Josh Donaldson, might record an out to complete the inning and leave the two runners on base if the 3-1 pitch is ruled a ball and Stanton is given a free pass. He might also blast a three-run home run. The future? We do know that the strikeout decision lengthened the at-bat and allowed Stanton an additional opportunity to cause harm, which he took advantage of.
With that home run, Stanton now has nine long balls in his previous 12 postseason games and ten in his 20 postseason games overall. Through 20 postseason games, only Carlos Beltrán (11) has more home runs. Stanton had a lifetime postseason batting line of.288/.372/.712 as the year 2022 began. In October, the 2017 NL MVP was a lone wrecking ball.
Cortes saved his own bacon
No less, from the seat of his jeans. In the fourth inning, with the bases loaded and two outs, Myles Straw sliced a comebacker up the middle, which Cortes reached up and grabbed. He fell and hit his behind, but he was still able to get the out by throwing to first base. One of the quickest players in baseball is Straw. Cortes was pressed for time.
If Cortes fails to stop it, the b
all will go to centre field for a two-run winning single. By bringing it down, at the very least, the ball would have remained in the infield and the second run would not have been able to score. Nearly an added bonus was getting the first base out to end the inning.
Despite having numerous opportunities to really make an impact in the scoreboard, the Guardians only managed to score two runs in five innings against Cortes. Against the All-Star lefty, they had multiple runners on base in three of the five innings and left a runner on base in four of the five. Cortes swayed but did not ultimately crumble.
Judge struggling in the ALDS
Aaron Judge, who has 62 home runs, is 0 for 8 through two games of the ALDS, including 0 for 5 with four strikeouts in Game 2. Through two games, The Guardians have done a fantastic job of containing the favourite for the AL MVP. Judge hasn’t batted in the series with any runners on base, either. They have denied him any opportunity to cause harm of any kind.
It should be noted that Judge struggled a little bit in his final 13 regular season games, going 8 for 37 (.216) with 15 strikeouts. In the 2017 ALDS, he also had a 0 for 20 performance and 16 — 16! — strikeouts against Cleveland.