Why the Yankees must win this year — or else

NEW YORK — The New York Yankees epitomize big. The brand, the payroll, the expectations, the excitement, the disappointment. It is an appropriate bit of casting that the largest star in baseball history, Aaron Judge, wears pinstripes. He is the physical embodiment of the Yankees franchise: too big to keep failing.

For the past 14 years, the Yankees have not functioned as the perpetual conquerors who have won more World Series titles than any franchise. They entered this postseason having lost 10 of their past 18 playoff series. They have fallen in their past five American League Championship Series appearances. The most recognizable franchise in baseball, whose caps are worn around the world, has been rendered just another team.

With Game 3 of the ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians set for 5:08 p.m. ET on Thursday, the Yankees can taste their first World Series appearance since 2009, when they won their 27th championship. Their 6-3 win in Game 2 was New York’s fifth in six postseason games, giving them a 2-0 series lead on the Guardians.

Now is the time for them to deliver. Everything has lined up for the Yankees. They won the AL East. Their greatest tormentors, the Houston Astros, were knocked out in the first round, unable to wreck more Yankees dreams. They dispatched the pesky Kansas City Royals in the division series. And not much looks as if it will change in the ALCS. Among the five wild pitches in Game 1, the shoddy defense in Game 2 and the flaccid bats in both, the Guardians haven’t looked up to the task of beating a Yankees team that has found its groove in October.

For large chunks of the season, this team looked like a threat to win its 28th World Series. In the playoffs, New York has preyed on a pair of AL Central teams to reinforce they are the best the league has to offer. The Yankees this postseason have walked 37 times and struck out 44 times in six games. They feature a lineup whose Nos. 7-9 hitters in Game 2 went 5-for-10 and scored three runs. Their leadoff hitters have been on base in 25 of the 51 innings they’ve played in October. Their bullpen ERA is 0.77 over 23⅓ innings. They’ve given up only three stolen bases.

The only thing missing for New York had been Judge, whose failures in past Octobers — a career .769 OPS in the postseason compared to 1.010 in the regular season — are the lone ding on a pristine résumé. If he begins to perform like his MVP self — and perhaps he started something Tuesday with his first home run this October — Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. predicted nothing short of a gilded future.

“We’re World Series champions. No other doubt in my mind,” Chisholm said. “I’ve been saying it from day one, and that’s without him raking. He’s starting to come together. And now I see it.”

This has been the plan all along. They spent $360 million to re-sign Judge and gave up a boatload of talent to acquire Soto. They stuck with manager Aaron Boone and have seen him work wonders with a questionable bullpen. The Yankees are carrying themselves the way they haven’t in years — with a strut, a we’re-good-and-we-know-it attitude. Championship No. 28 is within reach. And now is the moment — first against the Guardians, then whomever wins the dogfight between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets — for 14 years of letdowns to give way and let the Yankees earn what they believe is theirs.

LAST WEEK IN Kansas City, as the champagne celebration raged inside the Yankees’ clubhouse after their division series, one person remained in the dugout. Judge was missing the tail end of the revelry, by choice, because through the bowels of the stadium walked the players’ families, ready to celebrate themselves on the Kauffman Stadium field.

This is what Judge does, and this is who he is. Family matters as much as his teammates, and he wanted them to know that. Even as his struggles at the plate mounted, Judge hadn’t lost sight of who he is, what he means and why he is the face of the Yankees.

It was simultaneously gratifying and frightening, then, to see what happened in the seventh inning of Game 2 on Tuesday night. Cleveland’s Hunter Gaddis, one of the best relief pitchers in baseball this season, delivered a 95 mph fastball in a great location — the tippy-top of the strike zone, between the belt and the letters even on the 6-foot-7 Judge. It was the sort of pitch Judge saw dozens of times this season and batted .095 against.

He suffered no such frailties Tuesday. Even in the cold autumn air of Yankee Stadium, with the wind conspiring to knock down the ball, it kept flying, 414 feet, over the center-field fence, prompting paroxysms of joy among the 47,054 fans who witnessed Judge’s first major moment of this postseason.

The gratification comes from the Yankees’ immense respect for Judge — how much he cares and how he carried the team for months and how he holds people accountable without making them feel as if they’re being held accountable. As great of a player as Judge is, he is regarded as a similarly gifted leader, and to see their captain not performing to his capabilities vexed Yankees players. He had struggled for only 15 at-bats — nothing in a normal stretch, everything in October. Which is what made Judge showing signs of life frightening as well: If the Yankees were rolling through the postseason before Judge found his swing, imagine what they’ll look like if the home run off Gaddis portends more. Especially if the hitter in front of him keeps getting on base.

EVERYTHING THE YANKEES envisioned when they traded for Juan Soto last offseason has become a reality. Rare is the deal with outsize expectations that are actually met, and yet here is the 25-year-old Soto, in the midst of another postseason run, able to relish it far more than he did the first time.

Soto was 20 when the Washington Nationals won the World Series in 2019. He burst on the scene a year earlier, a 19-year-old wunderkind with the best eye since Barry Bonds and preternatural power who shot balls over the fence to all fields. Winning a championship only a year later spoiled Soto.

So he’s relishing this — the opportunity to make history with a franchise where history matters more than anywhere. The trade for Soto cost the Yankees dearly in talent. Not only did they give up Michael King, who threw 173⅔ innings of 2.95 ERA ball this season, but four other players as well. All for one season of Soto.

New York knew he would be headed for free agency this winter, and that didn’t stop general manager Brian Cashman from ponying up a gargantuan package. The pressure on Cashman and Boone, vise-like in a normal year, had tightened after they went 82-80 in 2023. The previous six seasons had ended in postseason losses, but at least they ended in the postseason. This was beyond the pale: fourth place and 19 games behind an AL East-winning Baltimore team with an Opening Day payroll $217 million lower than the Yankees’ $277 million.

Acquiring one of baseball’s finest hitters solved plenty, and the evidence revealed itself early. Soto drove in runs in each of the Yankees’ first four games this season, a sweep at Houston. He proceeded to hit a career-high 41 home runs, lead the AL with 128 runs scored and get on base in 138 of the 157 games he played. And he has been magnificent this postseason, leading the Yankees with seven hits, walking as much as he has struck out and further distinguishing himself as a unique offensive presence.

A player of Soto’s talent with hunger for the moment is about as good as it gets in the sport, and the seamlessness of his transition to New York only heightens what’s ahead of him. Soto’s free agency is primed to be a frenzy: He is a $500 million-plus player, and another World Series appearance would not only validate his rightful place as one of the highest-paid athletes in history, it would reinforce just how properly this Yankees team was constructed.

HAL STEINBRENNER IS not his father. George, who bought the Yankees in 1973, won back-to-back World Series in 1977 and 1978, oversaw the four-titles-in-five-years dynasty from 1996 to 2000 and captured his final championship in 2009, a year before his death. The Yankees’ championship-or-bust standard is a George Steinbrenner creation that Hal inherited and can’t disavow.

Nor does he want to. As the Yankees barge toward a World Series berth, it’s worth remembering Steinbrenner has continued to spend money befitting the Yankees. It’s never as much as fans in New York desire, but their $296.6 million Opening Day payroll this year ranked second in MLB. Their payrolls ranks the nine years prior: 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 6, 4, 2, 2.

What’s most important — and where Cashman deserves credit — is that the players receiving the majority of that money have played central roles this postseason. Gerrit Cole ($324 million) pitched like an ace to clinch the division series. Carlos Rodon ($162 million) threw six brilliant innings in Game 1 of the ALCS, using his slider for strikeouts and inducing swings and misses on three of his four changeups. Judge is about to win his second MVP in three seasons and carried the Yankees through 162 games. Soto is Soto.

Best of all is Giancarlo Stanton, the 34-year-old slugger whose seven seasons in New York have been as much about the time he hasn’t spent on the field as the time he has. Trading for Stanton, who had nearly $300 million remaining on the final 10 years of his deal, was a risk.

Well, that’s the purpose of a giant payroll: it allows for moonshots. New York figured it was buying the best of Stanton for the first half of his time in pinstripes. The fact he has performed this October like a prime version of himself, with a 1.037 OPS and two home runs, is a reminder the Yankees do have an advantage and it is well within their rights to use it, just as the Mets and Dodgers have.

It also illustrates the biggest difference between the Yankees of past and present. Under George Steinbrenner, Stanton would almost certainly be wearing a different uniform. With Hal, patience is a virtue in which he truly believes. If he didn’t, the man running the team from the dugout almost certainly wouldn’t be there, either.

AARON BOONE IS a very good Major League Baseball manager. This sort of statement angers a fair number of Yankees fans, but it is objectively true. Boone has the deep respect of players, he fights when it’s needed, he manages stars exceptionally, he’s strategically sound a vast majority of the time, he’s conscious of history and he’s good with the media. The Yankees job is the most scrutinized in baseball, and he does pretty much every part of it well.

This postseason has been Boone’s playground. It has been only six games, so there is plenty of time for him to push a button that detonates a game, but his tactical acumen has been exceptional. Three times already he has turned to Luke Weaver — his innings-eating-long-man-turned-closer — in the eighth inning of playoff games. And he has been rewarded with a four-out save and a pair of five-out saves.

Yes, it’s the sort of thing more and more managers are doing. But it speaks to Boone’s understanding of leverage. Sometimes the biggest outs in a game come in the eighth inning, and if you’re gifted a closer who can cover multiple innings and go multiple days in a row, use him and use him plenty.

And the presence of Weaver does feel like a gift. The Yankees are the 31-year-old’s sixth major league team. He arrived in the big leagues in 2016 as a 92-mph-throwing starter. He went to Arizona in a trade, stumbled there, wasn’t any better in Kansas City, scuffled with Cincinnati and Seattle last year and wound up making three starts for the Yankees at the end of their dismal 2023. New York brought him back on a one-year, $2 million contract, and it wound up as one of the best deals of the winter.

The Yankees’ bullpen looked like a mess in early September. Boone finally tired of Clay Holmes‘ blown saves and removed him from the closer’s role. The only pitcher New York acquired at the trade deadline, Mark Leiter Jr., flopped and didn’t crack the Yankees’ ALDS or ALCS rosters. Boone wasn’t comfortable with Jake Cousins (too many walks) or Tim Hill (too few strikeouts). He trusts Tommy Kahnle, but in 221 career games with the Yankees, he has only four saves, an indication of New York’s reticence to throw him in the ninth.

The job went to Weaver almost by default, and all he has done since is get hitters out. Since his first save Sept. 6, Weaver has thrown 18 innings, given up seven hits, walked four and struck out 33. His ERA is 0.50. He is not Mariano Rivera, but he’s doing one hell of an impersonation. And along the way, Holmes has righted himself: 14⅔ innings, nine hits, five walks, 13 strikeouts and 1.23 ERA — with nary a run scored in 6⅔ postseason innings.

Every championship team has its surprises, and the Yankees’ bullpen turning into a weapon — in similar fashion to Jose Leclerc and Josh Sborz having the October of their lives with Texas last season — qualifies. Yankees relievers have been so good that it might make a regular observer of baseball wonder: Can they really keep it up?

NOW THAT THE Yankees find themselves here, two wins from the World Series, six victories from a parade down New York’s Canyon of Heroes. And with their path to a title as favorable as they’ve had in years, it’s incumbent on them to finish the job. Beating a pair of AL Central teams is one thing. Doing it against a National League team that survived the gauntlet of the far better league will require something different altogether.

Sure, Judge hit a home run — but his previous 26 plate appearances left plenty to be desired. Weaver and Holmes have been the best relief duo this postseason — but Boone’s reliance on them surely has an expiration date, and pitching both in each of New York’s six playoff games runs the risk of overexposure, regardless of how good their stuff looks. The Yankees have won tight, hard-fought games. Their victories against Kansas City came by one, one and two runs, and their two wins against Cleveland are by three runs apiece. Despite being gifted a dropped pop-up and bobble in right field by the Guardians, New York needed Judge’s home run to provide a decent cushion in Game 2.

Carrying a 2-0 series lead into Cleveland helps allay fears. There will be at least one more game played at Yankee Stadium this year, and the Guardians see Game 3 as a must-win. Teams that start a seven-game league championship series with a pair of wins are 32-5. Only once has a team fought from a 3-0 deficit to take an LCS.

And that, of course, was the Boston Red Sox‘s famous comeback against the Yankees in 2004. Cleveland will be hard-pressed to find the same sort of magic against this Yankees team. They’ll need to beat Clarke Schmidt, who, when healthy, was a nightmare for opposing hitters. Particularly terrifying for Cleveland is that against the Guardians’ mostly left-handed lineup, Schmidt, who ditched his changeup this season, will rely heavily on his cutter to saw off Guardians hitters. And no team in MLB this year had a lower OPS on cutters thrown by right-handed pitchers than the Guardians’ .653.

Schmidt is the Yankees’ No. 3 starter, and he finished the season with a 2.85 ERA, and it’s just another sign that for all the lamenting that New York was simply a two-man team with Judge and Soto, that was never true. There is substance to these Yankees. They’re not here just to do something. They’re here to do something big, the only way they know how.