Yankees finally over hump to World Series – and superstars led the way
The World Series is coming, and with it the attendant hype accompanying what will probably be the first Yankees-Dodgers bicoastal battle since 1981.
There will be supersized billboards of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, or perhaps Francisco Lindor vs. Juan Soto if the New York Mets sneak through, and the seasoned ball watcher will look at the hype and smirk, knowing that a utility infielder or middle reliever might ultimately be the hero.
Yet these New York Yankees smashed to pieces all that playoff randomness, all these notions that superstars on superteams aren’t any likelier to win than some nondescript upper middle class club that gets hot for a minute in October.
The Yankees are back in the World Series, for the first time since 2009. And a club that’s truly larger than life has its big boys to thank.
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They are a traveling road show, the 6-7 Stanton able to hit baseballs harder than any human on the planet, the 6-6 Judge somehow able to patrol center field in concert with pounding 58 home runs this season, an American League-record 62 two seasons ago.
And then there is Soto, who feels like he’s been around the spotlight longer than all of them – yet will celebrate just his 26th birthday Friday, batting second and patrolling right field for the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series.
Saturday night, all of Soto’s immense talent and considerable swagger coalesced in the batter’s box at Progressive Field, 10th inning, 2-2 game, the Yankees leading the Cleveland Guardians 3-1 in the American League Championship Series and a fielding error giving them the kind of opening to dispense significant punishment.
Soto set his jaw and dug in, taking a pair of pitches before fouling off one pitch, and then another and another, and one more for good measure, his conviction only rising and, we can only wonder, the anxiety perhaps cresting for Guardians reliever Hunter Gaddis.
“I was telling myself,” Soto said in a TBS interview after the game, ‘I was all over him, I was all over him, I was all over him.’”
Call him cocky if you like, but truth is always a defense.
After parrying a handful of changeups and sliders, Soto finally got the fastball he wanted, the kind that he pulverizes, and muscled it to right center field. He stared at it not so much because he knew it was gone, but rather that by mean-mugging the baseball, it might land beyond the fence.
And so it did.
Some 402 feet later, the biggest home run in Yankee history since – oh, let’s see, Hideki Matsui’s two-run shot off Pedro Martinez in Game 6 of the 2009 World Series? – landed in the bullpens. And the practical impact of that blast – Yankees, World Series-bound – almost paled compared to the grander picture:
Soto did exactly what he was supposed to when the Yankees brought him to New York.
His free agency will remain the burning question this offseason, and this October platform will ensure his price tag hovers north of half a billion dollars. Yet whether he gets his bag in the Bronx or elsewhere – and even if the Yankees do or don’t win four more games – the mercenary bit has been a smashing success.
“Not everyone loves it, loves it like Juan Soto does or like a lot of our guys do,” manager Aaron Boone said in a press conference after Game 5.
“He loves it.”
Soto hit bookend home runs in this ALCS, a solo homer to start the Game 1 scoring and then Saturday’s decisive smash. He’s 11 for 33 this postseason, with a .450 on-base percentage, all this coming off a 41-homer season.
Yet these Yankees have rented stars, bought them, collected ‘em, expended billions of dollars in payroll since the last time they won the World Series. Yet some pluckier, wiser, better-built team would always come along and record the last out of the season that the Yankees felt was their divine right.
Think about it: The San Francisco Giants have won three titles, the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros two since the Yankees’ last championship. Heck, the Kansas City Royals won consecutive AL pennants and a championship.
This season, the superstars aligned.
Consider Stanton. Star-crossed and injury-plagued for much of his stint in pinstripes since the Yankees imported him from Miami after the 2017 season, it all came together for G this October. The Yankees have used him judiciously and tried to conserve his 6-6, 245-pound tight end’s frame and he rewarded them with 27 homers and, as manager Aaron Boone likes to note, a constant presence when he’s in the lineup.
Well, the man with 429 career home runs, an NL MVP and a Home Run Derby title now has an ALCS MVP trophy to add to his mantle.
He hit a baseball 117.5 mph Saturday night, a feat of strength that buttresses his image as Adonis on a diamond. Yet it wasn’t just a laser but a gamesaver, a two-run shot that ruined a shutout effort from Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee and squared the game 2-2.
The Guardians will regret pitching to Stanton – he literally hit the only strike thrown him in a six-pitch at-bat 446 feet – because they’d been put on notice.
Game 1: Solo homer.
Game 3: Go-ahead eighth-inning solo homer.
Game 4: Go-ahead sixth-inning three-run homer.
And then Saturday’s blast, which was his 16th career postseason homer, all of them with the Yankees.
Easy to posit that the first dozen or so were for naught. Stanton arrived with manager Aaron Boone in 2018, one year after Judge’s epic rookie and near-MVP season. They were schooled by the Red Sox in the 2018 ALDS and 2021 wild-card game, punked by the Rays in the COVID bubble ’20 ALDS, posterized again by the Astros in the 2019 and 2022 ALCS.
All the while, Stanton’s $325 million contract and Judge’s service-time clock and all the failed expenditures kept whirring along. Yet managing partner Hal Steinbrenner made the right calls when it mattered most: Re-signing Judge for $360 million and greenlighting the trade for Soto this winter.
Judge’s contract means he wears the biggest target, for opposing pitchers to avoid and fans and media to grouse if he’s less than explosive in every series. Yeah, he showed up: A home run in Game 2 and a two-run game-tying blast in Game 3 that shook Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase to the core.
Freak out if you must about small samples, but the man still has a .773 OPS and 15 homers in 53 career playoff games.
It’s just that now, he’s got some help. Perhaps Soto will be gone next year. Maybe Stanton won’t be so fortunate with his good health come next October.
But right now, the Yankees are unstoppable: 7-2 this October, on their way to the World Series, taking no shorts to whichever opponent joins them.
Larger than life, you might say.
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