As SU said earlier, just getting to the World Series for the Yankees this year was a win – a successful season – and I stick with that. Once you are there, stuff can happen in a short series. But… having said that, this was very frustrating for Yankee fans. Their weaknesses were all exposed by a very good Dodgers team. Fact: the Yankees lost to a better team. SU notes these points:
- The 5th inning last night – epic. OK, Judge, who is a gold glover caliber outfielder, just dropped one – stuff happens. Volpe would have been better off going for the force at 2nd base but had that runner at 3rd with a good throw. The grounder to Rizzo had a lot of spin on it and SU can see why he let it roll to him figuring Cole was covering. That was on Cole.
- Cole pitched great for most of the game.
- The bullpen actually was decent for the series. You can’t really fault them except for game 1.
- 1 for 10 with RISP last night. Typical of this team all year. The Dodgers put the ball in play. You can claim that some of their hits are lucky, but that’s baseball and good things can happen when you do that vs. striking out.
- Stanton earned his pinstripes. SU will no longer bad mouth him. He comes to play in October and we can see that not everyone does that. He can’t stay healthy in the regular season and is cold for long stretches, but he is not cold in October.
- Judge had finally gotten hot the last two games. A shame they could not force this back to LA for a game 6.
Bottom line: fans can hope for Soto to return but SU says less than 50-50 that happens. Can’t see Hal putting up the money to do that. Get some relievers for next year and hope they can stay healthy. And let’s have more hitters who just hit vs. home runs.
Tough one to swallow but we move on to the Knicks here in New York… and the Rangers/Islanders. Football usually ends in September here.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
I am a Met fan who was rooting for the Dodgers, semi-enthusiastically, so I am coming at this from a different perspective, and here is my take: I understand this was a team that can’t hit with runners in scoring position and only hits home runs. But guess what? That’s essentially what they did last night to go up 5-0, and they were ready to put a huge amount of pressure on the Dodgers, who, after going up 3-0 in the series, wanted to get on a plane to go home and celebrate, not play more baseball (kind of like the Yankees in ‘04, and we know how that turned out).
And to me, this game was OVER if Gerrit Cole runs to first base to cover that ground ball. NO WAY the Dodgers are coming back from down 5-0 after not scoring with the bases loaded and no out. Yes, Judge and Volpe screwed up easy plays, but great pitchers sometimes bail out their teams, and Cole did that after those 2 strikeouts and a routine ground ball. Then, instead of finishing the job, he totally screws up a play that teams work on, literally, the first day of spring training, when pitchers and catchers report.
Now for the thing that really bothered me: Judge blamed himself, I didn’t see any quotes from Volpe, but I’m sure he held himself accountable. Cole’s interview was AWFUL! Basically, he said he misjudged how hard the ball was hit, thought he could field it himself, took a bad angle to the ball, and by the time he realized he should cover first, it was too late. WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT??? Here’s what his quote should have been: “The entire inning was my fault. Forget the other 2 errors, I had the chance to bail us out. I assumed Rizzo was taking the ball himself, but it’s my job to get over there and have him wave me off. Without that play, we win the game. It’s on me.” VERY lame excuse by a great pitcher who, in my opinion, cost his “imperfect” team a chance to make the Dodgers really sweat and have his team head to LA with a hot team very capable of winning 2 games in a row.