Yankees Slip Into a Power Struggle for the Ages in ALCS

Stacking a staggering number of strikeouts through two games in Houston to go down 2–0 in the ALCS, New York will count on Gerrit Cole to make up for its shortcomings at the plate.

HOUSTON—The Yankees’ hitters have no answer for the Astros’ pitchers.

“It’s tough to say,” said right fielder Aaron Judge, who is 1-for-8 in the American League Championship Series.

“I’m at a loss for words right now,” said outfielder Matt Carpenter, who is 0-for-5 with five strikeouts.

“I think we’re gonna go into this off day and kind of take a step back, take a breath and reflect on what we need to really work on and adjust to get going again,” said catcher Kyle Higashioka, who is 0-for-4 with four strikeouts.

Judge finished ALCS Game 2 hitting 1-for-4 with a run scored in the Yankees’ 3-2 loss :: Thomas Shea/USA TODAY Sports

They whiffed 13 times in Thursday’s 3–2 Game 2 loss to run their ALCS total to 30, against nine hits and four walks. No other team in history has ever produced, through two games of a playoff series, such an offensive offensive performance.

“We just got to find a way to do a little bit more offensively,” said manager Aaron Boone. “But we feel like we can go out there and limit them enough, a very good offense, and give us a chance.” Then he added the most important point: “Certainly no one better than Gerrit to hand the ball to get us right back in this.”

Indeed, if you don’t allow any runs, you only need to score one to win. So the Yankees will turn to 32-year-old ace Gerrit Cole, whom the team signed for nine years and $324 million before the 2020 season just for moments like this one. He had spent the previous two seasons in Houston, increasing his curveball usage, ditching his mediocre two-seamer and throwing his devilish four-seamer at the top of the strike zone. It was there that he became the devastating pitcher the Yankees hope can save their season when the series resumes for Game 3 on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

He did it in Game 4 of the American League Division Series against the Guardians Sunday, when the Yankees took the field in a 1–2 series hole. Cole fired seven innings of two-run ball, striking out eight and scattering six hits, as New York won 4–2 to force a decisive Game 5. (Cole spent that afternoon in the bullpen, trying to convince someone to let him pitch in relief, and eventually being “showered with beer and hit in the head with french fries as we got the last out,” he said.)

The ALCS will shift to the Bronx, where Cole will start Game 3 with the Yankees trailing the series, 2-0 :: Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo

Cole knows better than nearly anyone else the challenge he will face Saturday. He entered this series expecting that the Yankees would need him to be perfect. The Astros are too dangerous. He watched them enter the eighth inning down 7–3 to the Mariners in Game 1 of the ALDS, and he watched them score two runs in the eighth and three in the ninth to win. They won the next two to sweep the series, and then two more against the Yankees.

“One characteristic that connects all the dots is the way that they play together,” Cole said. “So whatever it is in any given game, they're going to try to gang tackle you, really. And they play until the whistle blows, like they say in the NFL or something like that. It's just a very team-oriented mentality. And I find that that's really a commonality amongst any good teams or any teams that are getting this deep in the postseason. But certainly it's just at another level of familiarity with them, with the type of veterans and the type of players that they have had in all these big situations over all the years. So that's what got them to the level that they are at and it's what sustains them.”

Now Cole gets another chance to be the guy, a role he relishes. Some within the organization believe he has relished it too much in the past, wanting so badly to rise to the moment that the moment overwhelms him. Pitching coach Matt Blake has been on the lookout for that particular trait this October. He has not found it.

“I feel like he’s done a nice job in the last couple of games,” Blake said. “It's been good to see that as the moments have gotten big, he's gotten slower and really stayed in his delivery, and not trying to overthrow, and used his curveball and slowed the game down. So I’m really encouraged in the last two outings by him really controlling the timing and tempo and his delivery, which gives me a lot of confidence that as the crowd gets loud and the moments get big, he's been doing a great job of gearing down instead of letting the delivery and the tempo get too fast.”

Saturday will offer a lot of big moments for Cole. The Yankees will need him to have the answers.