Yankees rally late, hold off Guardians to take 3-1 ALCS lead

CLEVELAND — The one lesson Giancarlo Stanton has taken from the past two nights of the American League Championship Series at Progressive Field — a chaotic, thrilling, mind-blowing concoction of postseason theater distilled to its most intoxicating form — is simple.

“No lead is safe,” Stanton said.

Duplicating the nauseating drama that was Game 3 was seemingly impossible. But Friday’s Game 4 produced another wild ride, though with a different result.

This time, the New York Yankees, 24 hours after an excruciating body blow of a loss, outlasted the Cleveland Guardians  8-6 after squandering a four-run advantage and battering the Guardians’ two historically dominant relievers in another classic to take a 3-1 series lead. They can clinch their first World Series appearance since 2009 with a win Saturday in Game 5.

“It feels like nothing until we get it done,” Stanton said. “As far as I’m concerned, we haven’t done nothing.”

Stanton played a starring role in Game 3 as part of the one-two punch that stunned Emmanuel Clase, baseball’s best closer, with two outs in the eighth inning. First Aaron Judge lasered a tying two-run home run. Then Stanton hammered the go-ahead blast. It was the first time Clase had given up multiple home runs in a game in his career.

The outburst, despite coming in a loss, bred confidence. The Yankees saw Clase wasn’t invincible. They toppled him and believed they could topple him again.

“That’s going to give you confidence one through nine for the next day, and the next day after that,” said Yankees catcher Austin Wells, who homered off Guardians starter Gavin Williams after not reaching base in his previous 21 plate appearances. “It just shows that he can be beat and that it can be just not one guy, it can be multiple guys.”

In the ninth inning Friday, with the score tied at 6, that assurance translated to another round of success against a man who allowed runs in consecutive outings just once in 74 regular-season appearances. The second knockdown commenced with a leadoff single from Anthony Rizzo. Anthony Volpe then lined a single to center field to advance Jon Berti, pinch-running for Rizzo, to third base.

With Wells at the plate, Volpe stole second base to put two runners in scoring position. Clase was staggering again. The Yankees needed to land another blow. It came via a 44 mph chopper off  Alex Verdugo’s bat. Guardians shortstop Brayan Rocchio, drawn in to cut down the potential tying run at home, appeared to have decided to let Berti score to secure the sure out at first base, but he didn’t field the ball cleanly. Berti scored, and everybody was safe.

Four pitches later, Gleyber Torres deposited an RBI single to center field to pad the Yankees’ lead and leave the sellout crowd stunned, wondering what happened to the closer who had been so great for so long.

“I’m not losing my confidence,” Clase said in Spanish. “I’m going to give my best. [But] it’s something that I’m surprised about, what’s happening.”

After surrendering five runs during the regular season, Clase has been charged with four over the past two nights.

“Not being scared, not being intimidated, just going in there with the right proper plan,” Stanton said. “It’s going to be a tough at-bat, we know that, but this game is tough and we need runs.”

Stanton didn’t face Clase on Thursday. Instead, he solved the Guardians’ other superb bullpen arm. Cade Smith, a right-handed rookie sensation, had given up one home run in 81 appearances, playoffs included, in 2024. No. 2, despite some struggles, didn’t appear imminent in the sixth inning, not after Smith got ahead of Stanton 0-2 with runners on second and third base. But Stanton, like Thursday against Clase, did not concede the at-bat. Two pitches later, he blasted a 94 mph fastball 404 feet to the bleachers beyond the tall wall in left field.

It was Stanton’s 15th career playoff home run, tying Judge and Babe Ruth for fourth most in Yankees postseason history. He has hit four of them in these playoffs, fueling the Yankees’ offense when it needed it most.

“He did it again,” Boone said. “I mean, just to get to two strikes there and get to one — looked like almost a letter high heater maybe and just smooth as — just special. Just locked in, prepared. His preparation and his ability to just lock in and focus is impressive.”

Stanton’s latest postseason moment gave the Yankees a four-run cushion. They needed every run because the Guardians, like they did in Game 3, responded again.

On Friday, they tallied a three-run seventh inning against Jake Cousins and Clay Holmes to pull within a run. The blitz was powered by run-scoring doubles from Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor off Holmes, who stumbled again after surrendering the walk-off home run to David Fry in Game 3.

By that point, Boone wasn’t sure how he would deploy his taxed bullpen to secure the remaining outs. He entered the night steadfast on not using Luke Weaver, who had pitched in the first three games of the series and faltered in Game 3.

So, with one out in the seventh inning, Boone gave the ball to Mark Leiter Jr., who was added to the Yankees’ roster as an injury substitution before the game and hadn’t pitched since Sept. 29.

Leiter delivered, getting Jhonkensy Noel, Cleveland’s other Game 3 star, to fly out deep to left field before striking out André Giménez to extinguish the threat.

“Booney kept telling me, ‘Be ready for anything,’ and there was a chance I was going to be used to get big outs,” Leiter said.

The eighth inning, however, began with a leadoff double from Bo Naylor, who advanced to third base on  Brayan Rocchio’s groundout before scoring on another messy play. Fry hit a 40.3 mph squibber to Leiter’s left. Leiter tried snagging the ball on the run but booted it. The ball bounced away before Leiter bare-handed it and flipped it to Rizzo at first base. The flip beat Fry, but it handcuffed Rizzo, who didn’t catch it, allowing Rocchio to score the tying run.

A half-inning later, the Yankees accomplished what seemed all but impossible entering October. Clase’s armor was dented in the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers when he gave up a go-ahead three-run home run to Kerry Carpenter in the ninth inning of Game 2 and yielded another run in Game 4 three days later.

But four runs on six hits over two nights? At home? What the Yankees have done against Clase is another level. And what they did Friday has them within a win of their first trip to the World Series in 15 years.

“It’s a wave,” Stanton said. “It’s a roller coaster.”