The Yankees punched their ticket to the World Series with a thrilling Game 5 victory over the Guardians on Sunday, the third straight ALCS game that was decided in the final inning. The Dodgers followed suit with a blowout of the Mets in Game 6 on Sunday, the fifth game of the NLCS that was decided by at least six runs.
When it comes to judging the quality of a postseason series, size doesn't always matter.
Since the NLCS was the rare high-scoring snoozer, let's go back to the decisive moment of the ALCS, when Juan Soto stretched out his at-bat against Hunter Gaddis long enough to see his first fastball on a seventh pitch, and deposited it over the wall right of center for a three-run homer that put the Yankees ahead for good.
Because my brain is wired to process developments through a White Sox lens, it immediately took me back to the White Sox's 10-2 loss to the Yankees on Aug. 14. With a 2-1 lead devolving into a 6-2 deficit and Grady Sizemore seeking to stop the bleeding in the eighth, he called for Chad Kuhl to intentionally walk Soto with one out to bring Aaron Judge to the plate, hoping to set up an inning-ending double play. Instead, Judge took Kuhl deep for his 43rd homer of the season and 300th of his career, a three-run shot that gave the Yankees a 9-2 lead.
Sizemore, in his sixth game as a surprise manager, briefly became a big deal. Players second-guessed him ...
Oswaldo Cabrera watched from the dugout when Soto walked. He had the same reaction as everyone in the building: “They’re really doing this, huh?”
... analysts tried to get in his head ...
What was Grady Sizemore thinking when he decided to intentionally walk someone to get to Aaron Judge? There’s no way to know for sure, and the goal here is not to make fun of someone with a legitimate claim on the title of toughest first-time manager gig ever. That being the case, I just threw everything I had at the problem, and came up with 12 different explanations articulated from Sizemore’s point of view. They’re mostly silly and wildly contradictory. Sizemore has only managed five games, and there’s simply no way to know how he thinks, so I imagined a lot of different Sizemores. But some combination of them has got to be right.
... and Talkin' Yanks claimed he was tarnished forever:
But since Soto homered thrice the game before and took Davis Martin deep in the first inning of this particular game, Sizemore had an easy answer when asked about the walk.
"Maybe those four homers in the last two days," Sizemore said after the game. "And really it’s just pick your poison. I'm not trying to get to Judge. I've got a base open. He’s had four homers on us. I guess there is no solution or easy way out of that jam. Soto has definitely been the hotter of those two bats, even though Judge has been hot too. Again we were just kind of playing the situation there. We were already in trouble, and had the base open. Trying to get out of it any way we could."
Soto's series-clinching three-run shot off Gaddis showed that any course was likely to end poorly, and that any baseball writer or podcaster who wasn't tasked with following the White Sox for a living was foolish for devoting any sort of attention to the choices they made. For the Yankees, that was the whole point of having Soto and Judge hit back-to-back. For the White Sox, they spent the whole season watching lesser hitters run up the score with equal abandon. Having the good ones do it was a much more satisfying use of everybody's time.
A few more notes, now that both championship series are over:
No. 1: The White Sox have a window to interview Dodgers coaches Danny Lehmann and Clayton McCullough, among the known candidates.
No. 2: For those monitoring former White Sox to determine potential rooting interests, you're looking at Carlos Rodón, Tommy Kahnle and Tim Hill versus Michael Kopech, Daniel Hudson and Joe Kelly. Ian Hamilton is ineligible for the World Series since he was removed from the ALCS roster due to a calf injury.
As for José Quintana, he didn't get to pitch in a Game 7, but it's motivating him for next season.
