MLB playoffs: Three keys for the Yankees to advance to the World Series

For the fourth time in the Aaron Judge era, the Yankees are in the ALCS. You'll remember how each of the first three trips ended in devastating losses for the hated Astros. This time the Astros are long gone and the Yankees face the AL's No. 2 seed, the Cleveland Guardians.

The Guardians had a strong season in 2024 with a 92-69 record before defeating the Tigers in five games in the ALDS. They're not a juggernaut, but they have a more balanced roster than the Royals team the Yankees just beat. Strong supporting players like Steven Kwan, Josh Naylor and Andrés Giménez back up superstar José Ramírez, while Emmanuel Clase leads the league's best bullpen. Here are the keys to how the Yankees can beat Cleveland and punch their first ticket to the World Series in 15 years.

1) Aaron Judge stays within himself

At this point, if Judge has a poor playoff game, the narrative about his inability to hit in the postseason quickly becomes the main topic of conversation. While the narrative itself ignores Judge's excellent performance over the course of his first playoff series, it is true that he has performed very poorly in the playoffs over the last few seasons and looked undeniably shaky in the first few games of this series.

I'm not particularly interested in debating whether or not Judge can do it in October. In fact, he's done it many times in October, he's perhaps the best hitter since Barry Bonds, and it's only a matter of time before a player that great does it (Bonds himself was terrible in the playoffs…until…he did). not). Everything that was said, what Is For me, it's interesting to analyze Judge's actual game rather than getting lost in the exaggeration and bluster about whether he has what it takes to get it done when it matters most.

On the surface, it looked like Judge was pushing a little early in the postseason, and while we'll never know what Judge really thinks and how he operates, we can examine his on-field work for signs of nervousness. And in fact, in the first three games of the ALDS, Judge hit 34 of the 62 shots he saw, a rate of 55 percent that dwarfs his rate of 42 percent compared to the regular season. Additionally, Judge offered the first pitch in half of his 14 plate appearances, which he did about 30 percent of the time through 2024.

While these swing rates aren't gigantic, they're very different from Judge's typical, patient approach and suggest a player who was trying to make something happen at the plate. The result was less favorable counts for Judge, fewer pitches to drive, and some overly eager swings, which of course led to a handful of strikeouts.

Now we're approaching the “sample size of one” here, but Judge seemed to have calmed down before Thursday night's crucial Game 4. He swung the first pitch once in his four trips to the plate, just five of the 20 pitches he saw that night. Unlike the first few games of the series, he found himself in the headlines, such as hitting Lucas Erceg in his sixth inning. After winning the first three pitches of Kansas City's final possession, Judge was leading 2-1, and Erceg hit a sinker over the middle of the plate that Judge ripped off for a double:

This is a real Judge and exactly the type of player the Yankees need for the future. Judge seemed to see the ball quite well in Game 4 and noted after the game that he was just trying to adjust his timing to get it right. If he sticks to himself like he did in the crucial game against the Royals, I have little doubt he will go back to being the monster we know he is. It goes without saying that a committed Judge would be the biggest boost that could get the Yankees to the World Series.

2) Aaron Boone and his bullpen stay in lockstep

The collective MVP of the Yankees' ALDS win might simply have been their bullpen. Much maligned in the second half of the season, New York's relief corps quieted the doubters at the absolute best time, providing shutdown work in all four games of the series. Throughout the ALDS, the Yankee bullpen was not charged with any unearned runs over 15.2 innings (the unit allowed an inherited runner to score).

Additionally, manager Aaron Boone pushed all the right buttons throughout the series. With his ace struggling in Game 1, Boone struck out Gerrit Cole after just five innings. The bullpen allowed just one unearned run the rest of the way and the Yankees took a 6-5 win. When Carlos Rodón was hit around the fourth inning of Game 2, Boone was once again proactive, resorting to a bullpen that would shut out KC for the rest of the game and give the offense a chance to recover.

It was the same story in Game 3. Clarke Schmidt walked in the first four frames, but Boone didn't let that stop him from removing the right-hander after he ran into trouble in the fifth. Clay Holmes, Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver each recorded more than three outs as the bullpen secured a decisive win.

The only time Boone didn't use his bullpen proactively was in the deciding Game 4, when he understandably allowed Cole to pitch the seventh inning with a low pitch count. This move almost hit the Yankees when Kyle Isbel almost threw Cole deep for a game-winning home run, with the wind thankfully keeping the ball in the park and the Yankees taking the lead.

Both trends — that of the bullpen staying locked in and that Boone continues to proactively do his best in key moments, even if those moments come in the middle of the inning — must continue. Especially early in the ALCS, when the Yankees are fully rested and facing a bad day after Game 2, Boone needs to be aggressive with his most trusted backups. The calculus could change if the series goes long and the bullpen workload becomes tiring, but for now Boone appears to have a serious weapon on his hands and he should continue to use it.

3) Carlos Rodón finds his level

One could easily argue that Gerrit Cole is the most important key player in the Yankees' starting lineup. If their ace gets his turn in two starts this series, similar to his gem in Game 4 against the Royals, the Bombers will be in prime position to advance.

But I think it can be argued that Rodón's performance is more of an X-factor, so to speak. Cole's performance is more stable than Rodón's; The ace is unlikely to be much better than he was in Game 4 of the ALDS, and is unlikely to be much worse than he was in Game 1. He has as high a floor as any Yankee pitcher and a narrower range of plausible outcomes about the course of a series as Rodon.

Rodón, on the other hand, can make us feel the full spectrum of human emotions in just a few innings of one of his games. He rises to prominence in this series as a starting pitcher for Game 1 and Game 5, and if he can produce his better results against the Guardians at least once, if not twice, it's hard to imagine the season the Yankees' year will end next week.

Rodón's first inning of the postseason was some of the most scintillating pitching you'll ever see. The left-hander planted sliders on his knees and accelerated to 98 mph at the top of the zone. He strutted off the mound after batting on the side, clearly not only full of energy but also enjoying performing in a high-stakes environment:

Rodón was in playoff mode, his average four-seam fastball reaching a sizzling 97 mph, nearly two full ticks more than his regular-season average. But just as crucial to Rodón's brilliant start as his pumped-up performance was his execution. Rodón showed some of his best skills of the season during the first three innings against the Royals, sticking to the edges of the zone with his slider and barely allowing batters to hit a single fastball across the plate:

And it was the execution that torpedoed Rodon in that disastrous fourth inning. The Royals chased Rodón with a home run and three singles, all on pitches that contained significantly more plate than almost anything Rodón had shown them in previous innings. Here is the pitch position for each of the four hits Rodon scored in the fourth:

It was a shocking regression from Rodon midway through the game after being so sharp at the start of the game. Considering how hot Rodón came out of the gate, it's easy to wonder if he came into the game a little too hard, only to collapse after a turn in the lineup. It should be noted that Rodón's velocity was still at 97 mph in the fourth, but velocity isn't the only indication that a pitcher is losing his nerve. A deterioration in command and execution ability can also be a sign of fatigue, and in this case it is plausible that despite all that energy, Rodon was no longer able to continue playing at the level he had shown in the first inning .

For this series it will be crucial that Rodón finds his level. If it turns out he can't come out with as much power as he did in the first inning against KC and still perform at a high level into the middle innings, Rodón will have to slow down and find the amount of energy he can reasonably expend without burning out. A 3.2-inning outing in Game 2 of the ALDS wasn't a setback for the Yankees, not with a rested bullpen coming out of and into a bad day. Such short starts result in a higher penalty in the ALCS, with a maximum of two days missed in a nine-day period. The Yankees need Rodón to find themselves in Game 1, giving the Yankees the two-ace front of the rotation they envisioned when they signed him two winters ago.