SI:AM | Yankees-Guardians Game 3 Was Unlike Any Game You’ve Seen Before

Here are the stats that prove it.

Noel completely changed the trajectory of the ALCS with a game-tying, ninth-inning blast Thursday. / Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m glad Yankees-Guardians was the early game yesterday. I don’t know how I would have been able to sleep after that.

In today’s SI:AM:

🫨 Cleveland’s stunning comeback
👋 Tony Bennett calls it quits
🤔 Time for the WNBA to dream big

75 minutes of pure drama

If you watched Game 3 of the ALCS between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians on Thursday and thought, “Wow, I’ve never seen a baseball game like that,” you’re right. There literally has not been a game like that in the history of Major League Baseball.

To recap, the Guardians took a 3–1 lead into the eighth inning and brought in stalwart setup man Hunter Gaddis to protect the lead. He got the first two outs of the inning but was pulled after issuing a walk to Juan Soto so that closer Emmanuel Clase could face Aaron Judge. Judge hit a wall-scraping home run to tie the game—the second home run Clase had given up this postseason after allowing two home runs during the entire regular season. Then, Giancarlo Stanton followed Judge with a home run of his own to take the lead.

It was a stunning turn of events, but it paled in comparison to what the Guardians did in response. After New York added an insurance run in the top of the ninth, Yankees closer Luke Weaver allowed a two-out double to Lane Thomas in the bottom of the inning, bringing pinch hitter Jhonkensy Noel to the plate as the tying run. Noel proceeded to smack a no-doubt home run that sent the game to extra innings tied at 5–5. Finally, with two outs in the bottom of the 10th, David Fry hit a walk-off homer off Clay Holmes to give Cleveland a 7–5 victory.

Can you remember the last time you saw a game like that? No, you can’t. That’s because it was the first game in MLB history—regular season or postseason—that featured four game-tying or tie-breaking home runs with two outs in the eighth inning or later, according to OptaStats.

It would have been a wild way to end a game if it happened on a Wednesday in June. To have it happen in October, to help Cleveland avoid falling in a nearly insurmountable 3–0 series hole, with so many of the game’s biggest stars’ involved, is nothing short of incredible. There have been plenty of exciting games this postseason, but none was as dramatic as that one.

Not convinced? Here’s a few more stats about how bonkers this game was:

• The Yankees were the first team in MLB history to be trailing by multiple runs and hit back-to-back home runs to take the lead in the eighth inning or later of a playoff game.

• Clase gave up as many home runs in the eighth inning as he did in the entirety of the 2024 regular season. He’s now allowed more earned runs in five postseason appearances this year (six) than he did in 74 appearances in the regular season (five).

• Noel’s homer was just the ninth game-tying home run in postseason history that came when a team was down to its final out.

• Fry became the first player in MLB history to hit a go-ahead home run with two strikes and two outs in the seventh inning or later of a playoff game twice in his career. The other one came on Oct. 10, in Cleveland’s ALDS Game 4 win over the Detroit Tigers.

The other aspect of the Guardians’ win that can’t be overlooked is the fact that it came with Cleveland trailing 2–0 in the series. Teams that lose the first two games of a seven-game series don’t often come back to win. Only 15 of the 91 teams to drop the first two games have completed the comeback. So while the odds already weren’t in Cleveland’s favor, falling behind 3–0 would have been basically a death sentence. Only one team out of 40 has overcome a 3–0 deficit (the Boston Red Sox, 20 years ago against the Yankees in the ALCS).

With that in mind, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that Noel and Fry’s homers saved the Guardians’ season. Without them, the series would have been essentially over. Now, though? It’s just getting started.

Noel & Fry bat flips together pic.twitter.com/xSQD4mv5Sj

— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) October 18, 2024

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Stephanie Apstein has more on the Guardians’ big win over the Yankees—and how the team switched up its usual postgame tradition in light of the dramatic victory.

• Kevin Sweeney reflects on Tony Bennett’s career after the Virginia men’s basketball coach made the stunning decision to retire just weeks before the first game of the season.

• As the WNBA continues to grow, Michael Rosenberg has a few ideas for how the league should dream bigger—including moving the Connecticut Sun to a bigger market.

• Albert Breer’s NFL mailbag leads with a question about how Tom Brady’s ownership role with the Raiders could change over time.

• Jimmy Traina is disappointed with how MLB is allowing Fox to treat the NLCS like an afterthought.

• A former Olympic snowboarder is wanted by the FBI for allegedly running a drug ring and orchestrating multiple murders.

• Saturday is the final day of the MLS regular season. Here’s how all the different postseason scenarios could play out.

The top five…

… things I saw last night:

5. Shohei Ohtani’s leadoff home run.
4. Mookie Betts’s big night for the Dodgers: 4-for-6 with a homer, a double and four RBIs.
3. The reaction from a room full of Cleveland-area eighth graders to Jhonkensy Noel’s game-tying home run.
2. This side-by-side video of Noel and David Fry’s nearly identical bat flips.
1. The Spanish call of Noel’s homer by Guardians radio announcers Rafa Hernández-Brito and Carlos Baerga.