NEW YORK — You gotta start somewhere.
As manager Aaron Boone and several players preached following Monday’s 4-2 loss to fall into the dreaded 3-0 hole in the World Series against the Dodgers, the Yankees cannot come back all at once. It will require a singular focus on the game in front of them while acknowledging that there is substantial work to do beyond that. And if the Yankees are to become the first team in MLB history to come back from down 3-0 in the World Series — an uphill battle that requires only three more wins after New York’s 11-4 victory over the Dodgers on Tuesday in the Bronx — they must carry the positives from Game 4 forward and find more ways to play their best ball before it’s too late.
“We started this year winning four games in a row,” veteran first baseman Anthony Rizzo said before Game 4. “We know we’re very capable of winning four games in a row. So hopefully we can end this year winning four games in a row. That’s what we have to do to be champions.”
Indeed, the Yankees began the regular season by winning five in a row, the first of eight winning streaks of at least four games over the 162-game campaign. New York added a ninth such streak earlier this month, when it wrapped up the ALDS with two wins in Kansas City before opening the ALCS with two wins against Cleveland. So yes, this group is plenty familiar with catching fire and racking up a quartet of Ws in a hurry.
More daunting then — beyond the October history that flatly states their chances of coming back in this Fall Clasic are slim to none — is an opponent that has lost four games in a row only twice this season: a five-game skid in late May and a four-game tumble in mid-July.
“The Dodgers will not lay down by any means,” Rizzo said. “They’re a really good team. But we win tonight, we get to play tomorrow.”
The Yankees won Tuesday, so they get to play Wednesday.
It was a comfortable victory by the end, but it wasn’t the smoothest start for the Yankees in their quest to stave off elimination. Freddie Freeman gave the Dodgers a quick 2-0 lead with yet another home run — his fourth of the series — to right field off Yankees starter Luis Gil. Anthony Volpe failed to score from second on a booming double off the center-field wall from Austin Wells, limiting a second-inning rally to one run when it could’ve been more. For the first couple of innings, the vibes in Yankee Stadium were slipping in the wrong direction, just as they had 24 hours earlier.
But everything changed in the bottom of the third, when the Yankees built a rally against Dodgers reliever Daniel Hudson, culminating in a grand slam from Volpe to seize a 5-2 lead and send the Bronx into complete pandemonium. It was a memorable swing that more than compensated for Volpe’s baserunning blunder an inning earlier and injected a level of energy — and relief — into a Yankees dugout that had been craving such a moment all series.
“That big hit that we’ve been looking for, it happened,” outfielder Alex Verdugo said afterward. “And it just felt like a big exhale in the dugout, and everybody could play free and easy again.”
Volpe’s grand slam was one of two especially encouraging power displays from young Yankees bats in Game 4, with the other coming in the bottom of the sixth, when rookie catcher Austin Wells launched a drive down the right-field line into the upper deck for a solo homer followed by a slick bat flip. Wells was 4-for-43 across 12 postseason games entering Game 4, but after benching the rookie for Game 3 in favor of Jose Trevino, Boone reinserted Wells into the lineup for Game 4 and reaped the rewards of his power potential in a big way.
In a game in which Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton — who have carried the Yankees’ lineup through much of October — provided relatively little at the plate, it was awfully refreshing to see other portions of the Yankees’ lineup step up at the most pivotal moments. Until Game 4, the bottom half of the lineup had been a nonfactor for New York, while the Dodgers were getting contributions from practically everyone in their batting order. If the Yankees can continue to get more from their lesser hitters — not to mention more from their best hitter, Aaron Judge — suddenly these lineups start to look a bit more evenly matched.
The Dodgers remained in striking distance for much of Tuesday’s game, but the Yankees’ pitching staff kept them at arm’s length until New York’s offense exploded for five runs in the eighth inning, putting the kibosh on any potential late drama. The good vibes — and a modicum of confidence — had been restored at the Stadium, and the players could feel it.
“The atmosphere was electric,” said right-hander Luke Weaver, New York’s breakout bullpen arm, who collected more than three outs for the seventh time this postseason. “It just feels really good for the team to understand what that feels like, to regain some of that electricity or whatever we were feeling in the CS, the DS.”
With the Yankees up by two runs, Weaver entered with two outs in the seventh and a runner on second base and struck out Mookie Betts to end the frame before reemerging for the eighth and retiring the Dodgers’ 3-4-5 hitters — Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Max Muncy — in order.
“Just understanding that we’re a good team,” Weaver added. “And sometimes baseball is weird, but when you have it, you just don’t want it to go away. So we gotta continue to build off that.”
Weaver was the most impressive cog in another strong effort from the Yankees’ bullpen that has repeatedly stepped up this postseason, a trend that must continue. Tommy Kahnle and Jake Cousins were the only two of Boone’s go-to relievers who did not appear in Game 4 and thus could be especially fresh for Game 5, but expect it to remain all-hands-on-deck in another elimination game and with a day off coming Thursday, should the series continue. On the other side, the top options in the Dodgers’ bullpen will be well-rested after Dave Roberts opted to deploy a very select assortment of arms once he was playing from behind in Game 4.
More on the World Series
How much either bullpen will be relied on in Game 5 will depend on the rematch of the Game 1 starting pitchers: Gerrit Cole and Jack Flaherty. Cole outpitched Flaherty then, but not by much; Flaherty allowed two runs across 5 1/3 innings, while Cole allowed one run in six innings. Round 2 between the two right-handers offers very different stakes than the first edition, in which both starters were hoping to set the tone in the series, only to see Game 1 veer off-course.
On Wednesday, Flaherty, who has alternated strong and subpar outings across his four starts this October, can pitch his team into position to seal the World Series in perhaps his last start as a Dodger, with another go at free agency awaiting him in the coming weeks. For Cole, all the ingredients are in place for him to deliver another signature start in his storied career, albeit one that would get the Yankees only one game closer to pulling off the impossible.
That the Yankees have made it this far after a dismal first three games is already something of an accomplishment: The past nine teams to fall behind 3-0 in the World Series ended up getting swept, with the 1970 Reds the most recent team down 3-0 to force a Game 5. But the Yankees are hardly satisfied.
“It’s not gonna be easy, but this is what we’re made for,” Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “After we lost Game 3, we said, ‘Hey, who doesn’t wanna make history?’”
For Chisholm, who spent ample time postgame showering praise on his teammates and eliciting particular excitement about his friend Anthony Volpe’s grand slam, it’s about embracing the uncharted path ahead as an opportunity as much as it is a challenge.
“I know I love making history. I love writing my name in the history books and being a part of it. So let’s do it.”
As various Yankees players took turns reacting to Game 4 amidst the scrum of mics and cameras in the home clubhouse, a TV loomed above them with a brief to-do list:
“WIN TOMORROW, FLY THURSDAY.”
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