Yankees join Mets in next round, plus the Twins are for sale

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Here’s what we know about the Championship Series round: New York, New York. By the time we return Monday morning, we’ll know who the Mets and Yankees are playing. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!

Fun While It Lasted: Yankees advance to ALCS

Yankees 3, Royals 1: No disrespect to the Royals — whose 2024 season was truly remarkable, given their 56-106 record in 2023 — but this felt a little bit inevitable.

As Ken wrote a little over a week ago, if the Yankees don’t make the World Series this year, they won’t have anyone to blame but themselves. Last night, Gerrit Cole was chief among the excuse-eliminators, looking every bit the ace he has been in the past. He went seven innings, allowing just one run on six hits, striking out four and walking none.

Meanwhile, Giancarlo Stanton continued his October renaissance, going 2-for-3 with a walk, including a sixth-inning single that scored the Yankees’ third and final run of the night.

It wouldn’t be a Royals-Yankees postseason series without the benches clearing at least once. The grand old tradition finally happened last night, as Maikel Garcia caught an Anthony Volpe forearm to the upper torso on a late slide. (Yes, Jazz Chisholm Jr. was, at least tangentially, involved.) The midfield soiree was short-lived, but the Royals responded by scoring their first run of the game, as Vinnie Pasquantino singled home Bobby Witt.

For the Royals, it was a good run. It never feels good for a season to end, but this might be one of the rare times when it doesn’t sting quite so bad. It was a truly amazing turnaround. 

Meanwhile, the Yankees will get a few days off while they wait to find out who’s coming to town Monday.

More Royals-Yankees: Joba Chamberlain has World Series rings with both Kansas City and New York. He was in attendance to see his former teams face off yesterday.

Ken’s Notebook: The Darvish mystery for Game 5

Much as we love to crunch numbers, baseball does not always adhere to mathematical logic. Still, as the Dodgers prepare to face Padres right-hander Yu Darvish in tonight’s Game 5 of the Division Series (8:08 p.m. ET, FOX), two different sets of statistics offer them encouragement.

Darvish, mind you, was brilliant against the Dodgers in Game 2, allowing just one run on three hits and enduring a 12-minute delay when fans at Dodger Stadium threw baseball and beer cans onto the outfield grass during his seventh and final inning.

That start came, though, on eight days of rest. Darvish, 38, will pitch tonight on the standard four days of rest. In four starts this season under those circumstances, his ERA was 6.43, his opponents’ OPS .905. In 20 such starts over the past three past seasons, his ERA was 4.97, his opponents’ OPS .759.

And that’s not all.

Good as Darvish was in Game 2, he struck out only three and benefited from outstanding defensive plays by each of his three outfielders, including Jurickson Profar’s home run robbery on Mookie Betts in the first inning.

So, while the Dodgers were only 3-for-22 against him, their .265 expected batting average, based on quality of contact, was the sixth-highest against Darvish in 17 starts this season. Their .449 expected slugging percentage was the fifth highest.

What does it all mean? Who knows? Darvish has pitched well overall since returning from the restricted and injured lists on Sept. 4, producing a 3.06 ERA in 32 1/3 innings, including his Game 2 start. The Dodgers have yet to solve him this year in either the regular season or postseason. In three starts against them, Darvish has a 1.59 ERA, and has limited them to a .426 OPS.

This is why they play the games, right? Something must give in Game 5, in which the Dodgers will start righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto and follow him with a parade of relievers. Darvish, on paper, should have the advantage. Or maybe not.

Another Game 5: Guardians still in it

Guardians 5, Tigers 4: In Game 3, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt was pilloried for his early pinch hitting decisions. In Game 4, one of the same substitutions made all the difference.

Things were looking grim for Cleveland in the bottom of the sixth. Wenceel Pérez’s RBI single had given the Tigers a 3-2 lead, with just nine outs standing between them and the ALCS. But in the top of the seventh, after a Steven Kwan single, Vogt made the same move he had made in the third inning a game prior: left-handed-hitting Kyle Manzardo out, right-hander David Fry in.

Tigers manager A.J. Hinch countered left-to-right also, replacing Sean Guenther with Beau Brieske. But this time, the chess match went the Guardians’ way. Fry hit a two-out, two-run, pinch hit go-ahead home run.

There was another parallel between Game 4 and an earlier game in the series: Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase — who had allowed the dramatic three-run home run to account for all the scoring in Game 2, was once again called on in the eighth inning for a longer-than-usual save. He did allow one run in the ninth this time, but a safety squeeze in the top of the inning — also by Fry — had given Cleveland a two-run cushion.

It was the difference in the game, and with the one-run win, Cleveland forced a deciding Game 5 at home. Tomorrow, Detroit will send ace Tarik Skubal to the mound to face a pitcher currently going by the name of “TBD” (8:08 p.m. ET, TBS).

Big Deals: Twins for sale? 

In 1984, Carl Pohlad bought the Minnesota Twins for $44 million, or about $667,000 more than Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander made in 2023. The team was passed down to Carl’s son Jim in 2009 when the elder Pohlad died, and grandson Joe took over day-to-day operations just under two years ago.

Yesterday, news broke that the next owner will be the first in 40 years to have a different last name. The team is for sale.

The Pohlads should make a decent return on their investment. Estimates of the team’s value range from $1.46 billion (Forbes) to $1.7 billion (Sportico). The new owners will need a bit more than that if they want to appease the fans — the team’s payroll has been a point of contention in recent years, and likely contributed to the shocking collapse that kept them out of the postseason this year.

There might be some who say that’s not all ownership’s fault. After all, the Twins were one of the teams most negatively affected by Bally Sports’ ongoing bankruptcy drama.

But as Dan Hayes reports in the above link, payroll issues were hardly new:

“Since 2013, the club has ranked anywhere from 17th to 21st in MLB payroll. By 2016, the team dropped back below two million attendance during a 59-103 season. Despite reaching the playoffs four times in the past eight seasons, the Twins have struggled to resonate with their fans, eclipsing two million in attendance just twice.”

Whoever the new owners are, their first order of business should be to invest in the team’s future.

Handshakes and High Fives

(Top photo: Denny Medley / Imagn Images)