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 recall how each of the first three trips ended, with devastating losses to the hated Astros. This time around, the Astros are long gone, with the Yankees matched up with the No. 2 seed in the AL, the Cleveland Guardians.

The Guardians had a strong 2024 campaign, going 92-69 before rallying to defeat the Tigers in five games in the ALDS. They’re no juggernaut, but they have a more balanced roster than the Royals team the Yankees just downed. Strong supporting players like Steven Kwan, Josh Naylor, and Andrés Giménez back up superstar José Ramírez, while Emmanuel Clase anchors the league’s best bullpen. Here are the keys to the Yankees handling Cleveland and punching their first ticket to the World Series in 15 years.

1) Aaron Judge staying within himself

At this point, whenever Judge has a bad playoff game, the narrative around his inability to hit in the postseason quickly becomes a primary talking point. While the narrative itself ignores Judge’s excellent performance over the course of his first several playoff series, it is true that he’s hit very poorly in the playoffs over the last few seasons, and he undeniably looked shaky in the first couple games of this run.

I’m not super interested in discussing whether Judge can or can’t do it in October; he has in fact done it in October many times, he’s perhaps the greatest hitter to come along since Barry Bonds, and it’s only a matter of time before a player that great gets it going (Bonds himself was terrible in the playoffs … until he wasn’t). All that said, what is interesting to me is analyzing Judge’s actual play, rather than getting lost in the hyperbole and bluster about whether or not he has what it takes to get it done when it matters most.

On the surface, it did appear like Judge was pressing a bit when the postseason started, and though we’ll never know Judge’s actual internal thoughts and approach, we can examine his on-field work for signs of jumpiness. And indeed, over the first three games of the ALDS, Judge swung at 34 of the 62 pitches he saw, a 55-percent rate that dwarfs his 42-percent rate from the regular season. On top of that, Judge offered at the first pitch in half of his 14 plate appearances, something he did about 30 percent of the time over the course of 2024.

While those swing rates aren’t gargantuan, they’re very different from Judge’s typical, patient approach, and they’re suggestive of a player who was trying to make something happen at the plate. The result was fewer advantageous counts for Judge, fewer pitches to drive, and some overly eager swings, all of which led to, of course, a fistful of strikeouts.

Now, we’re getting into “sample size of one” territory here, but Judge looked like he’d calmed down come Thursday night’s clinching Game 4. He swung at the first pitch once in his four trips to the plate, and at just five of the 20 pitches he saw on the night. Unlike the first few games of the series, he found himself in hitter’s counts, such as in his sixth-inning at-bat versus Lucas Erceg. After taking the first three pitches from Kansas City’s closer, Judge had himself ahead 2-1, and Erceg grooved a sinker over the middle of the plate that Judge demolished for a double:

That’s vintage Judge, and exactly the kind of player the Yankees need going forward. Judge appeared to be seeing the ball just fine in Game 4, and he noted after the game that he was just trying to fix his timing to get right. If he stays within himself as he did in the clincher against the Royals, I have little doubt he’ll get back to playing the monster we know he is. It goes without saying, a locked-in Judge would be the single biggest propellent that could get the Yankees into the World Series.

2) Aaron Boone and his bullpen remaining in lockstep

The collective MVP from the Yankees’ ALDS victory might just have been their bullpen. Much maligned over 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. For the entirety of the ALDS, zero unearned runs were charged to the Yankee bullpen over 15.2 innings (the unit did allow one inherited runner to score).

Not only that, manager Aaron Boone pushed the right buttons across the series. With his ace laboring in Game 1, Boone removed Gerrit Cole after just five innings. The bullpen allowed only an unearned run the rest of the way, and the Yankees pulled out a 6-5 win. With Carlos Rodón getting hit around the fourth inning of Game 2, Boone was once again proactive, turning to a bullpen that would shut out KC the rest of the way and give the offense a chance to rally.

It was the same story in Game 3. Clarke Schmidt cruised through the first four frames, but Boone didn’t let that keep 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 locked down a crucial win.

The only time Boone wasn’t proactive in using his bullpen was in the clinching Game 4, when he understandably allowed Cole to pitch the seventh inning with a low pitch count. That move nearly did come back to bite the Yankees when Kyle Isbel almost took Cole deep for a game-tying home run, with the wind thankfully keeping the ball in the park and the Yankees in the lead.

Both of these trends, that of the bullpen staying locked in and Boone continuing to proactively go to his best arms in key moments, even if those moments come in the middle innings, must persist. Particularly early in the ALCS, when the Yankees will be fully rested and will have an offday looming after Game 2, Boone has to be aggressive with his most trusted relievers. The calculus may change should the series go long and the bullpen’s workload grow tiresome, but for now, Boone appears to have a serious weapon in his hands, and he should continue to use it.

3) Carlos Rodón finding his level

It’d be easy to argue that the biggest key in the starting rotation for the Yankees is Gerrit Cole. If their ace turns in two starts in this series akin to his Game 4 gem against the Royals, the Bombers will be in prime position to advance.

But I think an argument can be made that Rodón’s performance is more of an X-factor, so to speak. Cole’s performance is more stable than that of Rodón’s; the ace is unlikely to be much better than he was in Game 4 of the ALDS, and 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 over the course of a series than Rodon.

Rodón, on the other hand, can cause us to feel the entire spectrum of human emotion over the course of just a few innings of one of his outings. He takes on added importance in this series, lined up to pitch Game 1 and Game 5, and if he can find his higher-end outcomes at least once if not twice against the Guardians, it’s hard to envision the Yankees’ season ending in the next week.

Rodón’s first inning of the postseason was some of the most scintillating pitching you’ll ever see. The left-hander was dotting sliders at the knees and blowing 98 mph gas at the top of the zone. He strutted off the mound after striking out the side, clearly not just amped up, but having fun performing in a high-stakes environment:

Rodón had engaged playoff mode, his average four-seam fastball coming in at a sizzling 97 mph, nearly two full ticks higher than his regular season average. But just as crucial to the brilliant open to Rodón’s start as his souped up stuff was his execution. Rodón showed some of his best command of the season during the first three innings against the Royals, staying on the edges of the zone with slider and giving hitters nary a single fastball out of over the plate to drive:

And it was execution that torpedoed Rodon in that disastrous fourth inning. The Royals chased Rodón with a homer and three singles, all on pitches that got significantly more plate than nearly anything Rodón showed them in the earlier innings. Here’s the pitch location for each of the four hits Rodon yielded in the fourth:

It was a shocking mid-game regression from Rodon after looking so sharp at the game’s outset. With how hot Rodón came out of the gate, it’s easy to wonder if he went out a little too hard, only to collapse after a turn through the lineup. It should be noted that Rodón’s velo was still sitting 97 mph in the fourth, but velocity is not the only marker for a pitcher losing his nerve. Degradations in command and execution can also be signs of fatigue, and in this case, it’s plausible Rodon just wasn’t able to continue to execute at the level he showed in the first inning after expending all that energy.

It becomes vital for this series that Rodón finds his level. If it turns out he can’t come out as amped as he was in the first inning against KC and still execute at a high level into the middle innings, Rodón will have to throttle it back and find the amount of energy he can reasonably expend without burning out. A 3.2-inning outing in Game 2 of the ALDS was not a backbreaker for the Yankees, not with a rested bullpen coming out of and going into an offday. Such short starts will incur a greater penalty in the ALCS, with a maximum of two offdays in a nine-day span. The Yankees need Rodón to find himself in Game 1, and give the Yankees the two-ace front of the rotation they envisioned when they signed him two winters ago.