Yankees Lose

The Yankees’ 2021 season came to a fittingly ignominious close with a convincing 6-2 trouncing by the Red Sox in the Wild Card Play-In game last night. I say “fitting,” because the punchless Yankees deserved no more after scoring only 7 runs in their final four “must-win” games and being outclassed by the Tampa Bay Rays, their potential playoff opponent, both in the last weekend and over the course of the season.
The Bombers’ offense came down to two home runs around Fenway’s Pesky Pole, neither of which would have gone out of any other Major League ballpark. On the other hand, Giancarlo Stanton hit two rockets off the Green Monster, both of which would have been home runs elsewhere. Their only “rally”–two hits in a row–started with another infield single by Aaron Judge. I say “another” sarcastically because Judge won the crucial season finale against the Rays with a ground ball to second that was officially scored a single, even though he would have been out by ten feet had the second baseman thrown to first. With one out and the game-winning run coming in from third, the infielder had no choice but to throw home instead. It was still a classic Fielder’s Choice for scoring purposes, not a hit, and I’m still awaiting an explanation.
Judge’s single was followed by what the commentators agreed was the key play of the game. (For me, however, the key play was Xander Bogaerts’ two-run homer in the 1st inning, which set the tone of the game.) Judge tried to score on Stanton’s double off the wall and was thrown out at home plate by a perfect relay from centerfielder Kike Hernandez to Bogaerts. Alex Rodriguez stated definitively that Judge should have been held at 3rd–indeed, he should have known on his own to stop there–and when the play-by-play announcer tried to suggest that the issue was debatable, A-Rod told him he was wrong. In my view, however, it was the right play. Judge was barely out, maybe by half a step. A less than perfect relay and he would have been safe. How many times is such a relay less than perfect? Way more than half, from my experience. Bogaerts had to field the ball cleanly (it came to him on one hop), turn and fire a strike under pressure. All Judge had to do was run. If Judge had stopped at 3rd, his fate would have been left to Joey Gallo, whom A-Rod had continually called the “safe landing strip” for Red Sox pitchers. In other words, they should steer clear of Judge and Stanton and pitch to Gallo whenever they had the choice. Based on his average, the chance that Gallo would get a hit was maybe one-in-five, and marginally better that he would somehow get the run home. As it was, he popped up to shortstop, and Judge would have been stuck at 3rd, unless the next batter hit safely–a one-in-four proposition, going by averages alone. The 50-50 chance, if not 65-35, that Judge had of scoring on Stanton’s double was greater than the odds of his scoring by stopping at 3rd. But A-Rod and the commentators who followed him all claimed that Yankee 3rd-base coach Phil Nevin had blundered.
The other happy takeaway for me was the failure of Gerrit Cole to last more than two innings in the Yankees’ most important game of the year. They paid him gazillions to be the best pitcher in the league, and he wasn’t. This gave me hope, once again, that you can’t always buy the pennant; that no matter how much the Yankees spend, they can be beaten. Conversely, the Red Sox got a dominant 1-2-3 8th inning from Hansel Robles, whom the Twins had picked up on the cheap and who was useless in Minnesota earlier this year. Go figure.