Yanks get swagger back, cast pressure aside in Game 4 rout

NEW YORK -- All they needed, the Yankees said after digging a 3-0 hole in the World Series, was to score some early runs and apply some pressure to the Dodgers, for a change.

Easier said than done, of course -- but Anthony Volpe did the doing with the grand slam he’d surely drawn up in his head millions of times as he grew up a young Yankee fan.

With that, the Yankees absolutely got their mojo back -- and finally, they were the ones setting the tone in their 11-4 rout of the Dodgers in Game 4 to avoid a Fall Classic sweep and extend this World Series to at least Game 5 on Wednesday, when they’ll have ace Gerrit Cole on the mound looking to eat further into their 3-1 series deficit.

Volpe’s slam was the clear turning point, giving the Yankees their first lead since just before Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1.

But what came next sure felt just as significant.

“It allowed everyone to just take a deep breath and have fun,” said catcher Austin Wells.

“I think once we had that, you can see guys like, ‘Hey, we got it. It's time to go,’” added reliever Clay Holmes.

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The Yankees found the confidence, swagger and, yes, the fun they’d seemingly been missing all week -- looking much more like a team that could actually start digging out of that hole, instead of waiting for what sure felt like an inevitable burial at the hands of the machine in Dodger blue.

The Yanks’ lineup responded in turn by roaring to life in a five-run eighth inning that pushed New York to its second-highest run total in a postseason game in which they were facing elimination, behind only the 12 runs they scored in Game 6 of the 1960 World Series. (Let’s just ignore the, well, Bill Mazeroski of it all that ensued in Game 7 that year.)

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“I still think we can shock the world,” Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “The one thing about us is that we love history and we love to make history. For us, we're out here trying to make history right now. We know it's never been done, a 3-0 comeback, but we feel like we're the team that can do it.”

It helped that Wells busted out of a slump that saw him replaced in the Game 3 starting lineup by Jose Trevino with two barreled balls for a double and a solo homer. It certainly came as a relief, too, when Aaron Judge showed signs of life with an RBI single as part of a game in which he reached safely three times.

It wasn’t just the output, though -- it’s the manner in which they did it, too, that rejuvenated the Yankees’ belief.

Anthony Rizzo’s leaping grab into the stands in foul territory made them more of an aggressor on defense, retiring Teoscar Hernández in the Dodgers’ first plate appearance following Volpe’s slam. The Yankees became the aggressors on the basepaths again, running wild with five stolen bases, including three as part of their eighth-inning rally.

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But if the Yankees had to point to one plate appearance as part of all that action in the eighth that charged them up the most as they forced Dodgers reliever Brent Honeywell to throw 50 pitches, it was the 11-pitch battle by Alex Verdugo featuring six foul balls, in which he battled back from an 0-2 count and simply refused to give in before tapping a grounder to second base.

“It's hard as a pitcher,” reliever Luke Weaver said. “I told [Verdugo], ‘That's hard. We get really annoyed when things like that happen!’ ... That, to me, was the tone-setter right there.”

Volpe, who had continued his legacy game by swiping third on a double steal, scampered home on Verdugo’s grounder -- and clearly, the impact of that plate appearance carried into the next, as it fed into Gleyber Torres’ game-sealing three-run blast.

That thing about homers killing rallies? Nonsense. Juan Soto and Judge still had another run in store after that, with six consecutive Yankees reaching base in a sequence of good plate appearances adding to their belief that all it took was for Volpe to break the seal.

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“I think there's a lot of big stepping stones in there, a lot of guys starting to feel a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more rhythm at the plate, getting their swings off,” Verdugo said. “For us, that's big, and we know that this is an offense that, when we get hot and we click, we really get going.”

And when they get going, that, in turn, allows the Yankees’ power arms in the bullpen to get to work. Holmes, Mark Leiter Jr., Weaver and Tim Mayza held the powerful Los Angeles lineup hitless through the final four frames, striking out seven in a 10-batter sequence from the sixth to eighth by taking advantage of their slim lead -- an advantage that ballooned soon after.

“Playing from behind, it's easy to put pressure on yourself,” Holmes said. “When you get that lead, it's like, ‘Hey, guys, let's be the aggressors. Let's go after this.’”

Now, this feels more to the group in the home clubhouse like the Yankee baseball to which they’re accustomed -- the attacking and the aggression that they hope will carry into their ace taking the mound on Wednesday, and -- who knows -- just maybe give them the fuel to be the team that can shock the world.

“It feels really good for the team to understand what that feels like, to regain some of that electricity -- whatever we were feeling in the [Championship Series] and the [Division Series],” Weaver said. “Just understanding, ‘We're a good team.’ When you have it, you don't want it to go away. So we've got to continue to build off of that.”