CLEVELAND — With a bag slung over his shoulder and a hoodie pulled tight to battle the crisp night air, first base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. departed the Cleveland Guardians’ home clubhouse at Progressive Field with a deep chuckle and a quick head shake.
If anyone knows how Jhonkensy Noel, David Fry and these resilient, not-dead-yet Guardiac kids feel, it most certainly is him. Twenty-seven years ago on this same field, Alomar shook the lights with a late-game home run off the best closer in baseball in a game and series that until that moment, Cleveland felt doomed to lose. Alomar’s home run propelled Cleveland all the way to the World Series.
“I’m not thinking about any of that,” Alomar said with a laugh on his way to the parking lot Thursday night. “This was an insane game. We always have to go through them.”
These 72 minutes of magic and mayhem, from the time Aaron Judge tied the game in the eighth until Fry won it with a walk-off homer in the 10th, provided one of the most climactic, cinematic playoff games in recent history.
“It’s the best game I’ve ever been part of,” Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said.
The fact it occurred against the New York Yankees made it all just a little bit sweeter.
The Yankees have haunted Cleveland baseball for generations, and not just because it was the franchise George Steinbrenner really wanted to buy in the 1970s. New York has eliminated the Guardians the last two times they’ve made the postseason and three of the last four overall.
It was all but assured of becoming four of the last five series until Noel swung Thor’s hammer when the Guardians were down to their final out and facing a 3-0 series deficit.
The parallels between that 1997 American League Division Series Game 4 that made Alomar a hero and this Game 3 of the American League Championship Series that Cleveland won, 7-5 in 10 innings, run fairly deep.
Noel’s booming two-run homer into the bleachers when all hope was lost felt awfully similar to Alomar’s blast to right field off Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera when Cleveland was four outs from elimination.
Yet Judge’s unexpected blast to right to tie the game off Emmanuel Clase, now considered the best closer in the game, was also similar to Alomar’s blast off the game’s best closer a generation ago. It even landed in nearly the same spot.
Guardians players shuffled through their clubhouse Thursday night in half disbelief, half jubilation, unsure of what exactly they just witnessed. Media members know to flock to Austin Hedges in times like this, as Hedges always seems to know exactly what to say. Despite being a part-time catcher, he has become the unofficial club spokesman this postseason.
Not this time. An exhausted Hedges slumped back in his chair, eye black still smeared across his face, while he searched for words like Clase is searching to find his former self.
What has made these Cleveland comebacks so improbable are the faces leading it. While José Ramírez, Josh Naylor and Clase continue to fumble through October, it’s Fry and Lane Thomas and Matthew Boyd and now Noel who keep finding ways to light matches in the rain.
Ramírez is batting .167 and Naylor .154 in this series. Naylor’s .297 OPS is lower than Brayan Rocchio’s average (.455). At some point, the Guardians will need their biggest bats to connect. Yet the most concerning of all Cleveland’s struggles might be Clase. The anchor to this magnificent bullpen is lost at sea.
After allowing just five earned runs and two homers throughout the regular season, Clase has given up three home runs and six earned runs in just six postseason innings. He was dressed and leaving the stadium within 10 minutes of Fry’s walk-off home run, an alarming sign of trouble. If Clase doesn’t fix himself quickly, magic escapes like this one will eventually be solved.
What happened Thursday merely puts a little air back in this team’s tires. The Guardians are still down 2-1 in this series and searching for more fuel. Gavin Williams is at least a well-rested pump. Williams, who will start Game 4, hasn’t pitched in nearly a month after he was considered one of the franchise’s jewels and a big part of its future. That’s still true, but somewhere in August and September, he got passed over by Boyd, who was brilliant in Game 3, and Alex Cobb.
This is a critical three-game stretch for a team that relies so heavily on its bullpen. To this point, manager Stephen Vogt has been aggressive with his relievers because of so many off days. This is the first time this postseason the Guardians will have games on three consecutive days. After needing all of his top arms to survive Thursday, he’s going to need either Williams in Game 5 or Tanner Bibee in Game 6 to give this team more length than it’s yet received — Boyd’s five innings in Game 3 marked the longest outing for any Cleveland starter this postseason.
Either Williams or Bibee will likely have to match that or go even deeper for the Guardians to have a chance.
Williams has a roaring fastball that can dominate when he’s right. That just hasn’t happened as often as Guardians officials hoped for this year. He battled an arm injury that delayed the start of his season and he was tipping pitches in August. His fastball was getting hit harder than it ever was in August, though the numbers seemed to correct in September. Williams believes it was a combination of cleaning up both the pitch tipping and his mechanics, which had gotten out of whack.
The Guardians need Williams, but they need Clase, Naylor and Ramírez even more. At some point soon, if they are to wreck the nation’s hope for a big market World Series, their stars have to shine brightly once again.
Until then, guys like Fry and Noel, Boyd, Thomas and Rocchio are striking matches in the rain. They’re still flickering.
(Top photo of Guardians celebrating: Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
