Welcome to Underdog Friday, in which scrappy, 80-something-win teams pose existential threats to 100+ win teams. The Guardians/Yankees series doesn’t quite count because that’s a 92-win team against a 99-win team, but the Astros are probably pretty glad they didn’t play on Friday night. Here be upsets. In 2057, Eno Sarris, Jr. is going to write an article about how the postseason bye is a curse, not a reward, but we can only speculate in the present.
There were three games on Friday. All of them were fun. Let’s dig in.
New York vs. Cleveland: Guardians win in extras, put the pressure on the Yankees
The Guardians evened up the series with an extra-innings win in their ALDS Game 2, 4-2. They’ll go to Cleveland for Game 3 with a chance to take the series lead, which is a formula that’s worked well for the other underdogs in the Division Series.
The Yankees are right to be a little nervous.
Since the literal dawn of free agency, we’ve been conditioned to think about the Yankees as the sum of their mercenary parts. From Reggie Jackson to Catfish Hunter to Jason Giambi to Gerrit Cole, this is the team that takes your significant other and laughs at your mewling. They’re not sorry.
But this does a disservice to how many players the Yankees have developed on their own. From Don Mattingly to Andy Pettitte to Bernie Williams to Aaron Judge, they’ve been great at developing their own players. And it certainly does a disservice to the players the Yankees have cherry-picked from other organizations, from Willie Randolph to Jeff Nelson to Jonathan Loáisiga to Nestor Cortes.
Maybe it’s less about mercenaries and more about finding good players, regardless of the method used. Fair enough.
But in the eighth inning of Game 2, Isiah Kiner-Falefa walked, which loaded the bases and pushed Tim Locastro to third.
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