- Yankees forced a winner-take-all Game 3 with a tight win in the Bronx.
- Thursday’s Game 3 victor faces the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALDS.
- Boston has won the last three postseason series between the teams: 2021, 2018 and 2004.
NEW YORK – Let’s be honest: Nobody swings a whiffle bat in their backyard, mimicking the roar of the crowd and imagining not that it’s Game 7 of the World Series, but rather …
Game 3 of the American League wild card series?
Still, it is the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees in a winner-take-all game, the circumstances just like Game 7s in the epic 2003 and 2004 American League Championship Series, even if the stakes are far lesser.
The winner gets a trip to Toronto to face the Blue Jays in the AL Division Series.
The loser goes home, making the winter all the more bitter for fans already despondent a promising season came to an end, let alone at the hands of Those Guys.
And after the Red Sox stole Game 1 with a seventh-inning rally, the Yankees broke back to win Game 2 4-3, square the series 1-1 and, they believe, seize the momentum before some 48,000 bipartisan supporters cram into Yankee Stadium one more time Oct. 2.
“We’re at home,” says Yankees reliever Fernando Cruz, who bailed out starter Carlos Rodón and escaped a bases-loaded, seventh inning situation in Game 2.
“We are at Yankee Stadium, the Castle, and it’s time to go.’
And it’s not just any old elimination loss when it’s Yankees-Red Sox. The ramifications run deeper for all the parties, from manager to reliever to superstar. With that, let’s break down the six people with the most at stake when Game 3 jumps off in the Bronx:
Aaron Boone
Look, it’s just part of the deal.
Life as Yankees manager is an absurd existence, knowing that the game’s capricious nature takes so much out of your control, yet you have to play along and mollify the fans and media demanding grim repentance after every setback.
So it was in Game 1, when Boone caught some moderate heat for lifting starter Max Fried in the seventh inning – at worst, a 50-50 call – and keeping red-hot Ben Rice on the bench against Boston ace lefty Garrett Crochet.
The worm turned in Game 2, when Boone hooked Rodón perhaps a little too late but got away with it when Cruz clutched up in relief, and Devin Williams backed it up with a sterling eighth inning to set up closer David Bednar.
And so the binary outcome returns for Game 3: Capable Custodian or Idiot. The rest of us can simply enjoy some good ball.
“Look, it has been two great games,” says Boone, who is 0-2 against counterpart Alex Cora in postseason situations, losing the 2018 ALDS 3-1 and the 2021 wild card game.
“I think both sides have played really well. So look forward to tomorrow and, you know, try and move on.”
Or hear about it.
Aaron Judge
When you’re the captain and resident face of the game’s most valuable franchise, any year that ends without a championship is another missed opportunity. And while Judge has again produced an MVP-worthy season, those chances are getting slimmer.
He’ll be 34 in April, and while this mini-series hasn’t harmed his rep – he had an RBI single in Game 2 and a ninth-inning knock to set up a near-miracle rally in Game 1 – it wouldn’t hurt if he had a vaster October canvas with which to paint.
At the least, he and the Yankees are still alive, perhaps with momentum on their side.
“I know we lost the first game but the boys in here are ready to go,” says Judge. “ The energy is the same. We can’t wait to get tomorrow’s game started.
“We were hoping to play at 12 to get this thing rolling.”
Soon enough, big fella.
Jazz Chisholm
This was the year Chisholm married his charisma and buzz factor with brilliance: Just the third player in Yankee history to produce a 30-30 season, fully justifying his position in the baseball zeitgeist.
Then he was benched for Game 1, and perhaps was a little too upset about it.
Chisholm’s brooding after the Game 1 loss was a mild talking point before Game 2, and then the second baseman saved the Yankees’ season – first with a diving stop on a potential go-ahead hit by Masataka Yoshida in the seventh, and then a thrilling trip from first to home on a single that banged off the side wall in short right field to score the eventual winning run in the bottom of the eighth.
Another win in Game 3, and there’s still a chance this turns into Jazztober.
“After I left the field yesterday, it is win the next game. It is win or go home for us,” says Chisholm. “It is all about winning.”
Alex Bregman
What a first season for Bregman in Boston, leading the Red Sox back to the postseason for the first time since 2021, peppering the Fenway Park wall for an .821 OPS and lending his gravitas to a young clubhouse.
What a last season for Bregman in Boston?
That’s a question to be answered come wintertime, when Bregman figures to opt out of the final two years of a $120 million contract and test the market. He’ll be unencumbered by draft pick compensation, and should find his forever home, for sure.
And while his nearly decade-long track record is more than enough for clubs to pore over, deep October runs have a way of jacking up the price tag on boutique players. It would not hurt his cause if this month turned into a Bregman infomercial.
But first – Game 3.
“This is what baseball is all about – two great teams competing, unbelievable atmosphere. Looking forward to tomorrow,” he said after Game 2, putting on his Brevity Breggy, rather than Brash Breggy face. “Just be aggressive. Be yourself. Trust yourself. Prepare and compete and go out and try to execute.”
Alex Cora
Sure, he’s got that championship ring and an 18-9 record and the apparently unconditional trust of the brass in Boston. But Cora’s genius might take a mild hit if the Red Sox become the first team in the four-year history of this format to lose a Game 3 after winning Game 1 (the Cubs and Tigers will have first crack at that ignominious title earlier in the day).
Cora was his typically hyperaggressive playoff self in Game 2, yanking starter Brayan Bello after just 2 ⅓ innings and 28 pitches. A bullpen relay to Toronto, then.
They almost pulled it off, at least until elite set-up man Garrett Whitlock got struck by lightning in his second inning of work: A two-out walk to Chisholm and Wells’ single to win it.
Hey, they all can’t be masterpieces.
“We are all in,” says Cora of stretching Whitlock to two innings, perhaps rendering him unavailable for Game 3. “He is one of the best pitchers. We were doing everything possible to get to, you know, the top of the ninth with a tie game.”
Jarren Duran
Technically, Duran was not charged with an error on Judge’s fifth-inning fly to left that he came in on, dove for and then, simply, dropped. Catching it would’ve ended the inning, kept the score tied 2-2, and Trevor Story’s homer the next inning would’ve given Boston the lead, rather than tie it.
The final four innings had enough drama that Duran’s semi-muff got largely forgotten. Duran will have a lot more trouble turning the page.
“This one’s going to sting a little bit. I know this game is 100% on me,” says Duran. “Trevor hits the homer, we take the lead. I messed it up, gave them momentum. But that one’s on me. I’m going to have to wear that one.
“I’m excited to play tomorrow and redeem myself.”
Or else the winter might be a bit longer.