Last night the Yankees beat the Guardians to take the series in five. In the 10th inning Juan Soto hit a 3 run home run to take the lead and that lead to the win in extras. With this win the Yankees will advance to the world series. They will either be taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Mets. The Dodgers lead the series 3-2, with game six starting tonight.
The Yankees have had a very dominant playoff run so far with only losing one game in the ALDS against the Royals and losing just one game against the Guardians in the ALCS. Throughout this playoff run the Yankees have gotten a lot of additional assistance that they really didn't see in the regular season. The one weak point about this Yankees team is that they are very thin. Besides Aaron Judge and Juan Soto there wasn't much protection in this lineup. At the deadline they added Jazz Chisholm that definitely helped, but overall the lineup was pretty thin. That hasn't been the case for this playoffs. Gleyber Torres had a bad regular season, but he’s been fantastic in the playoffs. He’s hitting just under .300 and has a .400 on base percentage. Anthony Rizzo has finally come back from his injury and he’s looked great. Another surprise has been Anthony Volpe. He’s batting over .300 and has an on base percentage over .400. Also like Torres, they both are walking more than they are striking out, which has never really been a part of their game. The biggest surprise has to be Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton has regressed significantly since getting traded to the Yankees, but this playoff run has been spectacular. Stanton has five home runs which not only leads the Yankees but leads all players in the playoffs. Stanton also has eleven RBI’s which tied for second for all players in the playoffs. He’s also batting .294 somehow with a 1.179 OPS. The Yankees have gotten a ton of support with this lineup which has been incredibly important since Aaron Judge has not been able to hit much in the playoffs. Juan Soto has been really good though. He leads the team with a .333 batting average and has been very clutch with the Yankees.
The starting pitch hasn't been too great for the Yankees so matching up with the Dodgers would not be ideal with how good their starting pitching has been. With that said, the bullpen has been pretty great. Luke Weaver, Clay Holmes, and Tommy Kahnle have looked great this postseason all having a sub 3.5 ERA. Tommy Kahnle has been perfect through seven innings of work. It seems Weaver has gotten the closer role for the Yankees this postseason with getting ten innings of work with four saves.
This World Series means a lot for the Yankees. A lot of people saw the Baltimore Orioles winning this division so for the Yankees this seems really huge. The Yankees had a lot of struggles early in the season, the media thought Aaron Boone was on the hot seat for awhile. With this world series appearance all of that goes away. This appearance is also huge for Juan Soto. With all this success it’s going to be hard to see him leaving. Soto is a free agent after this season, I see the Yankees re-signing him to a mega deal.
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