Guardians pull even after rallying past Yankees 4-2 in 10 innings
NEW YORK — Little hits turn into big wins for the Cleveland Guardians.
Jose Ramirez hustled to reach third base leading off the 10th inning with a popup that dropped in left field, 200 feet from home plate. Oscar Gonzalez drove him in with the tiebreaking run on an even shorter opposite-field flare to right, then scored on Josh Naylor’s double, the only hard-hit ball of the inning.
“It’s not an easy way to win but it doesn’t mean you can’t,” Guardians manager Terry Francona said after Cleveland overcame a two-run deficit to beat the New York Yankees 42 Friday. The victory evened the best-of-five AL Division Series at one game apiece.
Winner Emmanuel Clase pitched 2 1/3 innings, his most in the major leagues, and combined with Trevor Stephan and James Karinchak for 4 1/3 innings of one-hit relief. Cleveland, 29th among the 30 big league teams in home runs, stopped a six-game postseason losing streak to the Yankees,
“We just try find a way on
base,” Naylor said. “If it’s a bloop hit, it’s a bloop hit. If it’s a hard-hit single, double, whatever the case it, we just try to hustle, try to make things happen on the field, try to put pressure on the defense.”
Game 3 will be at Cleveland today. There is no travel day because a rainout Thursday had pushed Game 2 back a day.
“Good starting rotation, a great bullpen. They got nasty stuff down there,” Yankees slugger Aaron Judge said.
Judge went 0 for 5 with four strikeouts and dropped to 0 for
8 with seven strikeouts and a walk in the series.
“Just a little late,” he said. “When you’re a little late, you’re missing pitches that you usually doing some damage on. You’re swinging at stuff that you usually don’t.”
Fresh off setting the AL home run record with 62, he was booed by some fans in the sellout crowd of 47,355 after whiffing against Stephan in the seventh.
“It’s the Bronx, man,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Great hitters go 0-for on a given day.”
Giancarlo Stanton hit a tworun, opposite-field homer to right in the first off 2020 AL Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber, Stanton’s 10th homer in 20 postseason games.
Cleveland tied the score against All-Star Nestor Cortes when Andres Gimenez had an RBI single in the fourth and Amed Rosario homered into the Yankees bullpen in the fifth.
Lou Trivino, Jonathan Loaisiga, Wandy Peralta and Clay Holmes followed Cortes and combined for four hitless innings.
Jameson Taillon made his first big league relief appearance after 143 starts, and Ramirez sliced a fastball that rookie left fielder Oswaldo Cabrera missed by inches as third baseman Josh Donaldson, his back to the plate, pulled up to avoid a collision. Donaldson fired the ball past second for an error as Ramirez hustled all the way and slid into third headfirst.