CLEVELAND — Every foul ball felt like a countdown to launch.
In the top of the 10th inning of Game 5 of the ALCS, with the score tied, Juan Soto steeled himself for the kind of battle he has won many times before. Hunter Gaddis was on the hill. Cleveland’s newest, and ultimately last, relief pitcher was tasked with taming the Yankees’ overpowered batting lineup.
Two batters in advance, Alex Verdugo grounded out to second baseman Andres Jimenez, and it looked like it was going to be an inning-ending double play. But shortstop Brian Rocchio couldn’t handle Jimenez’s hurried underhand toss. A play that could have resulted in two outs resulted in no outs. It was an error at the worst possible time by two of the best center fielders on the planet, and Gaddis was left struggling with two outs left. After striking out Gleyber Torres, it was Soto who stood in Gaddis’ way to keep the Guardians’ game, and their season, alive.
Gaddis attacked Soto with soft materials, mixing in sliders and changeups in various spots, aiming for whiffs or weak contact. Soto repelled every attack, gradually tilting the tone of the bat in his favor as he gathered information and redirected the pressure on Gaddis to attack with more straight-forward attacks.
Soto made a clean connection with his seventh pitch and his first fastball at bat. However, the ball was hit at an extremely steep launch angle of 37 degrees, and while everyone on the ground watched and waited, the ball soared into space, backspinning into the night sky. For 6.5 seconds, die-hard Yankees fans across the stadium and around the world wondered if Soto had hit a home run to send New York to the World Series for the first time in 15 years.
As if there were any real doubts.
Soto has charted this path before, as one of only three active Yankees to play in the World Series, along with Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo. He understands what it takes to have a productive October and has regularly delivered results in the biggest moments of big games. Soto, who is only 25 and will turn 26 when the World Series starts Friday, has already produced a career’s worth of heart-stopping home runs and clutch hits.
And on Saturday against Cleveland, when a towering fly ball finally cleared the center field wall and gave New York a 5-2 lead it wouldn’t relinquish, Soto delivered perhaps his most memorable swing ever. did.
Roughly 90 minutes before Soto scratched the moon with a long ball, Giancarlo Stanton, himself a legendary October performer, hit a home run of a very different kind than Stanton usually hits. It was a ridiculous laser beam that practically teleported from the bat. To the final landing spot far beyond the outfield fence.
Guardians ace Tanner Bibby stepped up over five innings, answering the call and providing a quality start for his team when they needed a strong start on short rest. The Guardians were hoping for some distance from Bibby in Game 5 after putting an extreme strain on their bullpen in the previous two games.
As a result, Bibby was given a chance to face the top of the New York batting lineup for a third time in the top of the sixth inning. After Torres and Soto reached the bases to start the frame, Bibby softened Aaron Judge’s double play to reduce the threat and come within one run of escaping unscathed.
The dangerous Stanton appeared as the tying batter.
Stanton swung a slider and changeup and quickly found himself in an 0-2 hole. But the next three pitches were far from the zone. With a full count, catcher Bo Naylor stood outside hoping Bybee would force Stanton to chase his slider. However, the slider didn’t slide well enough. And against Stanton, as we’ve seen several times this month, mistakes like that can have devastating consequences.
Kaboom. Gone. If Soto’s home run felt like an eternity, Stanton’s was the opposite. The match was decided by a momentary contact. The ball apparently evaporated and screamed from home plate into the left field seats to tie the game.
Stanton had struck out in his last two at-bats with Bibby, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. As manager Aaron Boone explained before the game when asked what makes Stanton different, Stanton is very good at applying what he learns from consecutive at-bats against the same pitcher.
“He’s just incredibly disciplined and has an approach, a process, a way of studying guys,” Boone said. “One of the things we’ve talked about a lot over the years…he really benefits more than anyone else from seeing pitchers over and over again. So he faces people. I think he handles himself sometimes. …He’s proven that he’s benefited more than anyone else through his career.
“Besides being very physical, he does things when he gets used to people.”
It is these physical gifts that allow Stanton to hit the ball harder than perhaps any player in the history of the game. His home run in Game 5 left the bat at 117.5 mph. Since Statcast began tracking batted ball velocity in 2015, no player has hit more home runs faster than 117 mph than Stanton’s 22. His teammate Judge ranks a distant second with 10.
“He can hit as hard as anyone, so there’s a physicality to what he does that’s different than anyone else in the world,” Boone said.
Stanton’s swing merely tied the game, but it injected a level of confidence and energy into the Yankees’ dugout that would continue until Soto took the lead. It was also the swing that proved Stanton is, and perhaps already is, the ALCS MVP. His four home runs in the series brought his total for October to 16 in just 36 games, with a whopping eight of those coming against Cleveland. Only Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Randy Arozarena have higher postseason slugging percentages than Stanton.
Six years before the Yankees made the blockbuster deal for Soto, they acquired Stanton in a trade in hopes that his big bat would help lead New York back to the promised land. So much has happened in the years since then, and many other trades have been executed in search of a roster that could eventually break through. It’s these repeated near misses that continue to motivate the Yankees to swing big when a superstar acquisition becomes available, and Soto is the latest example. Soto’s free agency is a $500 million acquisition issue this winter.
While Soto managed to make some progress in his first year as a Yankee, Stanton had to wait. But now they’re teammates, and in one game they put two swings together to put the Yankees in a position where they belong, as general manager Brian Cashman said while accepting the American League championship trophy. I returned it to its place.
“I didn’t plan on it taking this long,” Stanton said during a postgame celebration in the Yankees’ clubhouse. “But we’re here now, and this is exactly what I came here for.”
