In an postseason era marked by aggressive bullpen usage and pitching staff chaos, Gerrit Cole delivered a fantastic seven-inning performance on Thursday night to lead the Yankees past the Royals and into the ALCS. The final score of 3-1 makes the game appear closer than it actually felt; the Royals really only threatened once or twice all night thanks to an efficient Cole and a pair of scoreless relief appearances.
For the second time in the series, Cole racked up only four strikeouts in his outing, but this one was undeniably better than his shaky start in Game 1. On Thursday night, he gave up one run on six hits and didn’t walk anyone. The Royals’ approach was pretty clear from the get-go: They aggressively attacked his four-seam fastball and cutter early in the count, hoping to ambush him as they did in Game 1 — when their first five balls in play were all hit over 100 mph — before he could turn to his curveball or slider. This kept his pitch count down; he needed just 87 pitches to complete his seven innings. The BABIP gods must have turned away from the Royals because they didn’t earn their first hit until the third inning, and only once did they collect multiple hits in the same inning. As in the series opener, Kansas City made a lot of loud contact against Cole — 12 of the 22 balls in play off him registered an exit velocity of at least 95 mph — but this time half of those hard-hit balls were either on the ground (5) or popped up (1); in Game 1, all but one of his 11 hard-hit balls (out of 17 BIP) were line drives (5) or fly balls (5).
The Yankees batters were just as aggressive while facing Michael Wacha for the second time in this series. Gleyber Torres laced a double into left-center field on the game’s first pitch, and Juan Soto brought him home with an RBI single two pitches later.
Wacha settled down after inducing a double play from Aaron Judge and cruised through the next three innings. The Yankees struck again in the fifth when Torres chipped in with a two-out, run-scoring single that chased Wacha from the game. Right then, with runners on the corners, Soto due up, and his team down two runs, Royals manager Matt Quatraro turned to closer Lucas Erceg to get out of the fifth-inning jam. Soto got under a second-pitch changeup and skied it to center field for the final out of the frame.
Erceg came back out for the sixth to face Judge, who entered the plate appearance 1-for-12 in the series with four walks and five strikeouts; that lone hit was an 86.6-mph infield single in New York’s Game 2 loss. This time, though, Judge finally barreled one up, ripping a double into the left-center field gap. Catcher Austin Wells moved Judge over to third with a groundout to second, bringing up Giancarlo Stanton, whose career 160 wRC+ in the postseason ranks 12th among players with at least 100 playoff plate appearances. He scorched a 116.9-mph single up the middle to drive in the Yankees’ third and final run of the game.
Tensions rose a bit in the bottom of the sixth after the Yankees turned a 3-6 double play and Maikel Garcia took issue with the tag from Anthony Volpe at second.
After the play, Garcia started jawing with Jazz Chisholm Jr., causing both benches to clear and their bullpens to empty. No punches were thrown; they mostly just milled around second base for a few minutes. After the game, Chisholm said that he felt like Garica slid into second too hard and was sticking up for Volpe.
“I just felt like he tried to go and injure Volpe because he was being a sore loser. He was talking a lot on Instagram and Twitter and stuff. I do the same thing, but I’m not gonna go and try and injure somebody if they’re winning a game, and I didn’t like that. So I told him we don’t do that on this side, and I’m always gonna stick up for my guys.”
Chisholm became a lightning rod during this series. First, he scored the go-ahead run in Game 1 after a controversial safe call on his successful steal of second base. Then, following the Yankees’ Game 2 loss, he said the Royals “just got lucky.” That earned him a cold reception in Kansas City on Wednesday for Game 3, and the boos continued in Game 4. I’m sure this incident won’t help his reputation with the Kansas City faithful.
After all the hubbub died down, the Royals finally got on the board with a couple of two-out hits. Bobby Witt Jr. drove a single to right, and then scored from first on a long double off the bat of Vinnie Pasquantino.
The Royals gave the Yankees one final scare in the seventh; with two outs and a runner on first, Kyle Isbel launched a 370-foot fly ball to deep right field that fell just shy of leaving the yard. The batted ball had an expected batting average of .510 and would have been a game-tying home run in 24 ballparks, including Yankee Stadium, but Kauffman Stadium wasn’t one of them. Soto made the catch up against the wall. Inning over.
Turns out, so was Cole’s night. He finished with just six total swings and misses, five off his four-seamer and one with his curveball. More than half of the pitches he threw were four-seamers, but he didn’t really have great command of the pitch; just 52% of his four-seamers were in the strike zone, and most of his misses with it were high. It didn’t really matter much because the Royals weren’t willing to be patient and the rest of Cole’s repertoire was more than effective.
An interesting note about Cole’s pitch mix in Game 4: It was the first time in his major league career, spanning 336 starts in both the regular season and the playoffs, that he did not throw a slider. His usage of that breaking ball dipped a bit this year, falling from a little over 20% last year to just 14.6% this season, but it’s still pretty surprising to see him completely turn away from one of his best swing-and-miss offerings in a huge playoff game.
After Cole exited the game, Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver shut down the Royals in the eighth and ninth innings. Weaver earned his third save of the series, and the Yankees relief corps finished the ALDS without allowing an earned run across 15 2/3 innings.
For the Royals, this series ends their incredible turnaround season. It’s a bummer for them, though they head into the offseason with some hope that their winning ways might continue. They improved by 30 wins this year, they have an MVP candidate signed long term to build around, and their youngsters now have some postseason experience under their belts.
But this series also exposed some of the cracks they’ll need to address in the offseason. Witt Jr. collected just two hits in the series, preventing him from making much of an impact on the proceedings, while Pasquantino’s RBI double on Thursday was his first and only hit of the series. That’s not to put the blame on them; during a short series, sometimes your best players go cold. Sure, the Royals did get a bit of production from other members of their lineup earlier in the series, and Tommy Pham collected three hits in Game 4, but this is an offense that had the 40-year-old Yuli Gurriel — who has an 82 wRC+ over the last three seasons — batting fifth. The Royals simply didn’t have enough offensive firepower to compete with New York.
With the win, the Yankees advance to the ALCS for the second time in the last three years and the fourth time in the last eight. But despite their run of excellence for the better part of a decade, they have not reached the World Series since they won it all in 2009. To get there, they’ll have to beat the winner of the Guardians-Tigers series, which is set for a win-or-go-home Game 5 on Saturday night. The Yankees are the best remaining American League team; we’ll see whether that’s enough for them to win the pennant.
