Thoughts after Game 2 of the 2024 ALDS

I gotta tell ya, if I’m the Royals, I’m feeling pretty good about escaping Yankee Stadium with a split after Bobby Witt Jr. went 0-for-10 in Games 1 and 2 and the two starters each went four innings. For the first time ever, all four Division Series are tied 1-1. The best-of-five is now a best-of-three, and the Royals have home field advantage. Here now are a few thoughts after Game 2 as we head into yet another off-day.

Game 3 on Wednesday: RHP Clarke Schmidt vs. RHP Seth Lugo (7pm ET on YES, Max, TruTV)

1. The at-bats are good, the results are not. Cole Ragans reminds me so much of Cole Hamels. Similar delivery, similar changeup, similar mound presence, etc. Ragans has a better breaking ball (two, really), which has as much to do with Hamels’ peak coming before the pitch design era as anything. And thanks to that knockout changeup, Ragans had a reverse split this season:

• Ragans vs. RHB: .194/.274/.321 (.265 wOBA) with 31.8 K%

• Ragans vs. LHB: .276/.341/.382 (.320 wOBA) with 20.2 K%

Because of that, the Yankees stuck with their lefty heavy lineup in Game 2 other than at first base (more on that in a bit), and that lefty heavy lineup really battled against Ragans. He faced 19 batters and 10 saw at least five pitches. Four others saw at least four pitches. Ragans was not sharp, he was far out of the zone at times, and the Yankees let him work himself into trouble. Four walks in four innings.

The at-bats have been really good through two games, but at this time of the year, results matter more than process, and the Yankees are not getting enough results. They are 9-for-43 (.209) with runners on base in the series and they’ve had the leadoff runner reach in 12 of 18 innings, but have scored in only five of those 12 innings, or 42%. The league average is 52%. Five of the final 21 batters the Yankees sent to the plate reached base in Game 2. They did not take an at-bat with a runner in scoring position after the third inning. 

Gleyber Torres has been on base five times in two games and been the most productive Yankee, then of course he hit a first pitch grounder to end Game 2 while representing the tying run and with Juan Soto on deck. Come on man. I’m a Gleyber defender and in his defense, Lucas Erceg threw him a peak Jonathan Loáisiga 100 mph demon sinker that looked it was right down the middle until it took a hard right turn:

Jazz Chisholm Jr. got to Erceg for a solo homer in the ninth*, which was cool, but man I wish the Yankees had traded for Erceg at the deadline, especially at the price the Royals paid. Prepare to hear me complain about this for the next … looks up how much team control Erceg has remaining … five years. The Royals are gonna spam the Yankees with lefties and Erceg out of the bullpen all ALDS. It will not be pleasant.

* Look at this home run. 100 mph on the inner half and Chisholm just beat the pitch to the spot. His hands are lightning fast.

Aaron Judge went 1-for-3 with a walk and infield single in Game 1 and is 1-for-7 with two walks and four strikeouts in the series. He’s missed some fat pitches too. Look at his foul balls and swings and misses in the two games. Judge isn’t expanding the zone and doing pitchers a favor. He’s missing pitches in the zone, and that’s bad news. It looks like he’s pressing. Like he’s trying to hit a five-run homer each at-bat.

“If I’m not hitting 1.000, I’m not feeling good,” Judge said after Game 2. “I just gotta keep getting on base for the guys behind me. If they get on in front of me, I gotta drive them in.”

If Judge doesn’t hit, the Yankees might beat the Royals, but they have little chance to advance much further beyond that. The same goes for the Royals and Bobby Witt Jr. If he doesn’t hit, the Royals are doomed. Mookie Betts is 2-for-31 in the last three postseasons and the Dodgers are dunzo if he doesn’t get going. If Judge doesn’t hit, the Yankees can only go so far. They need more from Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Volpe, everyone, really. They’re fortunate to have split with Judge doing so little.

More than anything, the Yankees have to start slugging. They’re not going to win games with walks and singles. They don’t have the personnel to do that. They have to bang the ball, and two games into the ALDS, they have two doubles (Oswaldo Cabrera and Juan Soto) and two homers (Chisholm and Torres). It’s not enough. The at-bats quality is good, but not enough have ended with a loud sound.

2. Rodón in a nutshell. What an absolutely perfect microcosm of Carlos Rodón’s season Game 2 was. He came out throwing fire. The first inning was maybe Rodón’s most dominant inning as a Yankee, and he pitched well through three innings, long enough for the Yankees to take a 1-0 lead. And as soon as the Yankees took that 1-0 lead, Rodón melted down. Didn’t make it out of the next inning. His final line: 3.2 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 HR on 72 pitches.

That fourth inning meltdown was brought to you by hanging sliders. Salvador Perez hit a 2-0 slider into the left field seats six pitches after the Yankees scored their run. Fine. Whatever. One run. It happens. But Rodón could not stop the bleeding. Three of the next five batters didn’t just get hits, they got their hits on mistake sliders in two-strike counts. Look at the pitch locations on the four hits in the fourth inning:

Rodón got to two strikes on Yuli Gurriel, Tommy Pham, and Garrett Hampson, then could not put any of them away. The inning snowballed on him. The first time through the lineup, Kansas City went 2-for-9 with five strikeouts against Rodon. They went 5-for-9 with a homer the second time around. So much for the third time through the order penalty. It was a second time through the order penalty in Game 2.

Game 2 was Rodón’s season boiled down into one start. He was so good right out of the gate and you couldn’t help but think he’d dominate all night, but nope, it didn’t last, and the game got away in the middle innings. I feel like I watched that same exact start 20 times this season. Game 2 was the perfect encapsulation of Rodón’s season. No further notes.

“I felt he was pounding the strike zone with really good stuff all night,” Aaron Boone said. “He falls behind (Perez), and from there started making some mistakes with his secondary just in the heart of the plate … Just a tough inning where his command got away from him, especially in the secondary. Because stuff-wise he was excellent tonight, but then all of a sudden just a little scattered there.”

3. Jon 1Berti. With their No. 1 (Anthony Rizzo) and No. 2 (DJ LeMahieu) first basemen out with injuries, the Yankees have to get creative at first base, and that led them to utility man Jon Berti in Game 2. Entering Game 2, Berti’s professional experience at first base consisted of one game and three innings at the position in Spring Training 2021. That’s it.

“He's looked outstanding over there, I will say that, in his work,” Aaron Boone said before Game 2. “He's played a little bit in Spring Training over the years, but just a really natural infielder, and just the person that I have a lot of confidence in. Look, right now with obviously Riz going down, with a day left in the season, not being ideal, we're not necessarily in that perfect situation from a first base standpoint. Going to mix and match over there, and obviously Cabby did a great job I felt like in Game 1. And I kind of have that same confidence with Jon.”

Berti worked out at first base during the Wild Card Series bye week – “Rizz has been helping out a bunch. I’m just asking him a bunch of questions and learning as much as I can as quick as I can,” he told Gary Phillips – but taking ground balls and throws in a workout is much different than having to read and react during an actual game. A postseason game, no less. The Yankees are YOLOing it at first base.

MLB Network says Berti is the third player to make his first career start at a position in the postseason, joining Jake Flowers (third base in the 1931 World Series) and Carlos Santana (left field in the 2016 World Series). Cleveland put Santana in left so they could keep him and Mike Napoli in the lineup with no DH in the NL park. I covered that series for CBS and Terry Francona had a funny line after the game:

REPORTER: “What did you think about Santana in left?” (paraphrasing)

FRANCONA: “He only had one ball hit to him.”

REPORTER: “It was a screamer.”

FRANCONA: “That was me screaming.”

Santana played a few innings in the outfield earlier in his career and the same goes for Flowers and third base. They made their first starts, not their first appearances, at those positions in the postseason. So I think that makes Berti the first player ever to appear at a position for the first time when he started a game there in the postseason? Seems so. The Yankees are really devoted to playing guys out of position, eh?

Anyway, Berti was fantastic at first base in Game 2! He made a few tough plays, including a great lunging stop to snag a line drive and turn it into an inning-ending double play – there was a runner on third, so without the catch and the double play, the run scores – plus he had made several other nice scoops. Here’s the highlight reel. Berti looked like a natural at first base. Go figure.

Rodón is an extreme fly ball pitcher, so if you’re going to give Berti his first start ever at first base, it was a good time to do it. He handled himself well and even lined a single to bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth. The problem is the Yankees have reached the “hey, Jon Berti doesn’t look like complete garbage at first” rung on the first base depth chart. I keep thinking the first base situation can’t get worse, but it does.

Berti played first base well enough and had good enough at-bats – two six-pitch at-bats and two of his three batted balls were over 100 mph exit velocity – that the Yankees should just stick with him. What does it matter at this point? The Yankees are a team of contrasts. They have Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, two of the greatest hitters ever, but also Jon Berti and Oswaldo Cabrera at first base because uuugh getting a first baseman at the deadline would have been too hard guys.

4. Rapid fire thoughts. Jazz Chisholm Jr. saying the Royals got lucky after Game 2 is quite dumb. Here’s the full quote:

"It still feels the same, that we're going to win (the series). I don't feel like anybody feels any different. We're going to go out there and do our thing still. We still don't feel like any team is better than us. We had a lot of missed opportunities tonight so they just got lucky."

Chisholm hasn’t been here very long. He still hasn’t learned that anytime the Yankees attempt the slightest bit of trash talk, it blows up in their face. Hopefully this winds up being nothing and we all forget about it after the ALDS. With this team though, we’ll probably be watching the Royals parade toward Union Station wearing “They Just Got Lucky” shirts in a few weeks. … Ceremonial first pitch watch that nobody cares about but me: Andy Pettitte in Game 1 and Willie Randolph in Game 2. Randolph was of course part of those ALCS matchups with the Royals in the late 1970s and 1980. I hope I look as good as Willie does when I’m 70 … I didn’t love Aaron Boone using Luke Weaver in the ninth inning. On one hand, he was aggressive trying to keep the deficit at three, and I appreciate that. On the other hand, Boone gave Bobby Witt Jr. another look at Weaver. He’s faced him twice in two games and, if the Yankees are going to win this series, you have to figure Weaver will face Witt again in a big spot(s). Now Witt is more familiar with him. Shrug (the bullpen has been phenomenal through two games) … Maikel Garcia had a .281 OBP this season. The Royals put him in the leadoff spot in Game 2. He reached base four times. Good job, good effort Yankees … Nestor Cortes (flexor) played catch Sunday and Monday. Boone said Sunday’s session went well and it must have if Nestor was back out there Monday. Cortes is still considered unlikely to return this postseason, but he’s trying … The Yankees announced Clarke Schmidt as the Game 3 starter before Game 2 and that’s the right call. He’s simply a better pitcher than Luis Gil right now. Boone said he’s willing to use Gil out of the bullpen in any situation, but I’m not sure I believe that. I don’t think they want him coming into the middle of an inning given his control issues. With the off-day Tuesday, I’m not surprised the Yankees shoehorned Gil into Game 2 somewhere with the score relatively close. He feels like an emergency arm this round … And finally, remember when some idiot said offense was down in the postseason? In eight Division Series games, teams are hitting .241/.321/.402 (105 wRC+). It was .219/.284/.325 (74 wRC+) in the nine-game Wild Card Series. Runs per game went from 3.00 in the Wild Card Series to 4.50 in the Division Series, and homers per game went from 0.72 to 1.38. Been a really exciting postseason overall (Yankees-Royals might be the dullest series?). Other than Game 1 between the Guardians and Tigers, every game has been close into the late innings, and there’s some chippiness too. Feels like the Dodgers and Padres are going to brawl at some point. After that dud of a postseason last year, we’ve earned this. Highly entertaining postseason so far.