Guardians walk off Yankees thanks to Oscar Gonzalez, take 2-1 ALDS lead
CLEVELAND – The Guardians simply keep fighting as well as any team in baseball.
Trailing 5-3 entering the bottom of the ninth inning, the Guardians rallied to come from behind and take Game 3 of the New York Yankees 6-5. Game 4 is Sunday night at Progressive Field.
Myles Straw and Steven Kwan opened the ninth with bloop singles to left. Amed Rosario then hit a single through the left side of the infield that cut the Yankees lead to 5-4. Jose Ramirez followed with an infield single that loaded the bases with nobody out.
With one out, Oscar Gonzalez hit a single back up the middle to win it.
Here are some quick hits from Game 3.
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Yankees bullpen unravels
The situation called for a more experienced closer, but Clay Holmes never came out of the Yankees’ bullpen.
Instead, Clarke Schmidt entered in a critical, ninth-inning jam.
Gonzalez’s two-run single, on a 1-2 curveball by Schmidt with two out, allowed Cleveland to dance off with a win.
But after Wandy Peralta could not continue his excellent relief, lifted with one out and two runners on in the ninth, manager Aaron Boone summoned Schmidt.
After an RBI single by Amed Rosario and a bloop single by Jose Ramirez, Schmidt struck out Josh Naylor before Gonzalez sent everyone home.
The Yanks had already used Lou Trivino and Jonathan Loaisiga.
Homer happy
Yeah, the Yankees aren’t the hard-to-strikeout, put-it-in-play Guardians.
For Aaron Boone’s offense to be running at its optimum effectiveness, it needs the long ball. So, no surprise that in Game 3, all the Yankees’ runs were a product of homers.
And it started with Judge, in his second at-bat, batting for the first time in awhile out of the leadoff spot.
“I knew he’ll be fine with it,’’ the manager said of Judge before the game, feeling it wasn’t necessary to give his slugger advance notice of the change.
After his first-inning strikeout against Triston McKenzie, Judge crushed a 449-foot, game-tying two-run homer to center off McKenzie in the third.
And then, home runs came from less-than-expected places – the bats of rookie Oswaldo Cabrera (two-run shot off McKenzie in the fifth) and Harrison Bader (solo, off lefty Sam Hentges in the seventh).
Both those bats were flipped away – Cabrera’s tossed in the air, Bader’s sent spinning toward the visiting dugout.
Contributing: Pete Caldera from the Bergen Record
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