Surging Yankees grab 3-2 lead
The Baby Bombers are coming of age in a hurry.
Paced again by their young sluggers and getting a stellar outing from Masahiro Tanaka, the New York Yankees moved to the verge of an unexpected World Series trip with a 5-0 win Wednesday over the Houston Astros, taking a 3-2 lead in the American League Championship Series.
Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez and Greg Bird — all 25 or younger — drove in a total of four runs as New York swept the three games at home by a combined 19-5 score to flip the script on the ALCS. For the second time this October, the Yankees have roared back from a 2-0 series deficit despite having an abundance of relatively inexperienced players deemed too callow for the postseason caldron.
They have won six in a row at home in the playoffs and will have two shots at reaching their 41st World Series and first since 2009.
New York overcame an early deficit in the wild-card game, spotted the favored Cleveland Indians two wins in the division series and took the same route against Houston, a 101-game win- ner in the regular season. The Yankees also rallied back from a late four-run deficit to even the series Tuesday. In the previous eight times they won a Game 4 in the ALCS, they went on to capture the series.
“I’ve been incredibly impressed with the poise we’ve shown as a club,” says DH Chase Headley, who had three hits Wednesday. “We struggled individually, struggled as a team, we made mistakes that maybe even cost us a game, but there was never any panic. And that’s been the whole philosophy, don’t worry about what’s coming, just worry about that one game, and it’s worked well for us.”
On Wednesday, the Yankees finally solved longtime nemesis Dallas Keuchel, knocking him out in the fifth inning and scoring four runs off him, or three fewer than they’d managed in his previous eight starts against them.
Tanaka had lost his two other playoff matchups with Keuchel despite pitching well, and this time the Japanese right-hander elevated his game. Hardly looking like the pitcher who went 13-12 with a 4.74 ERA in an inconsistent season, Tanaka flummoxed the Astros with a mix of fastballs in the low 90s, sliders and splitters. His outing was a near carbon copy of his series-turning start against Cleveland. Once again, Tanaka threw seven scoreless innings while allowing three hits and walking one.
Bird’s RBI single in the second broke Keuchel’s spell on the Yankees, who went up 2-0 on Judge’s double in the third, then drove the lefty out of the game with run-scoring singles by Sanchez and Didi Gregorius in the fifth. Sanchez, who was 0-for-11 in his first three games of the series, also homered in the seventh.
New York’s second-inning run — fueled by a Starlin Castro double followed by Bird’s two-out single — must have felt like a catharsis. Keuchel had shut out the Yankees in all 14 previous postseason innings he’d thrown against them.
Keuchel wasn’t nearly as big a mystery Wednesday, five days after starring in Houston’s 2-1 victory in the series opener.
Judge, who struck out 16 times in 20 at-bats in the division series, found his stroke upon returning to New York, especially with runners on base. His third-inning double gave him three consecutive games with an RBI, after he homered the previous two nights to help New York even the series.
RBI situations have become a major bugaboo for Houston, the most prolific scoring team in the majors during the regular season. The club has totaled nine runs and wasted whatever opportunities it could muster against Tanaka in the early innings, stranding five by going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position through the fifth.
The series resumes Friday at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, where Justin Verlander outlasted Luis Severino and the Yankees bullpen in a 2-1 victory in Game 2.