Aaron Judge handed down a sentence. The Yankees’s slugger flexed his muscles and with one of his monumental swings placed the Guardians in a compromised situation in the American League Championship Series that, for the time being, says goodbye to the Bronx.
Judge’s quadrangular was the best vision of the night to explain the Bombers’s 6-3 victory over the Guardian, who now hope to regroup on the return home with the illusion of matching a commitment where almost everything is adverse to them.
Also Read: 17 Latinos are Listed as Finalists for the 2024 Major League Baseball Gold Glove
Given the credentials of both openers, many expected this to be a clash where the two pitchers walked deep, but neither managed to get past the fifth inning, although Tanner Bibee was the one who faced the most trouble and took the lead after 1.1 innings.
The Guardians expected much more from Bibee, who had pitched excellently against the Detroit Tigers, but since the meeting began he got into trouble and although one of the three runs scored by New York was due to a mistake, he wasn’t really on his best night.
After five unstoppable allowed and a threat that seemed to have no end, the Cleveland manager decided it was enough and pulled him off the mound, giving way to the bullpen, which did do an efficient job in the face of what looked like a frontal attack on the entire line.
But the Yankees’s threats didn’t stop and they had their reward in the sixth episode when Mike Rizzo hit a double that towed the Bombers’s fourth run, which are two games away from returning to the major stage in the Major Leagues.
The final toe came in the seventh episode when Judge fired a quadrangular across the central garden that cooled the soul of the Guardians and leaped joy to the more than 50,000 fans present at Yankee Stadium.
Gerrit Cole ran with greater fortune than Bibee but was also drawing problems in almost every inning until driver Aaron Boone decided not to take more risks with his best pitcher and decided to cease his work after 4.1 episodes.
The right went with two runs to his count and four punches, but he was his worst enemy when he gave away four bases for balls that made him very complicated and that, incredibly, were not better-taken advantage of by the Guardian.
Fortunately for the Yankees, the bullpen has been one of their strengths in this postseason and Boone didn’t shake hands by moving his second-line pitching so as not to let Cleveland find any attacking pace in the second half of the match.
Only a lone quadrangular by Jose Ramirez in the ninth inning aroused enthusiasm momentarily, but nothing else happened en route to the victory of the Mulos.
Despite some errors in the base runs, the iconic team of The Big Apple did their homework and left their headquarters with two wins on the line, with the intention of finishing the Guardians in the continuation of the Championship Series.
The third game of the series will be played at Progressive Field in Cleveland next Thursday and a Yankees victory would practically end the series.
