Everything at stake for Guardians, Yankees in Game 5
Will Leitch
@williamfleitchAnd so -- one day later than expected due to Monday's rainout -- we have a Game 5, our only one in the Division Series round. It’s quite a doozy, featuring the favored and forever-dramatic New York Yankees and the upstart (and SpongeBob-crooning) Cleveland Guardians.
The stakes are through the roof on this one, obviously: It’s a win-or-go-home game, between two teams that have been through the wringer this entire American League Division Series, and really, this entire season.
Every game such as this feels like the entire world is resting on the outcome. But for franchises like these two -- at these particular moments in their histories -- it can feel like if they don’t win while they can, everything may just change on them. What are the specific stakes for each of these teams in this decisive Game 5? Let’s take a look at what each team will face if they are eliminated on Monday night.
If the Guardians lose …
1. The chatter about Tito’s future will get louder
Terry Francona is a manager who is surely ticketed for the Hall of Fame. He’s 16th all time in AL/NL victories -- only three managers ahead of him aren’t in the Hall, and two of them (Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy) will surely be in soon -- and he has won two World Series titles, including one with the 2004 Red Sox that is fairly classified as “historic.”
But Francona is also 63 and has suffered various high-profile health issues over the past decade or so. He has said he plans on coming back next year, but he has also talked about how managing is taking a toll on him, that “physically, it’s getting harder.”
Francona winning a World Series with the Guardians -- the team with the current longest championship drought in MLB -- would be the ultimate career capper. But if Cleveland doesn't get there this year, Francona could soon run out of chances.
2. The AL Central won’t get any easier
The Guardians won their division by 11 games and had more wins than either one of the teams in the National League Championship Series (the Padres and Phillies). So they certainly deserved their postseason spot.
But there’s also no doubt that the AL Central sort of collapsed around Cleveland this year: Every competitor did some sort of faceplant, allowing the Guardians to cruise. Even accounting for those steps back, the division surely won’t be nearly as easy next season. (Here’s betting there’s at least one other team that finishes over .500, anyway.)
The Guardians didn’t have to make a lot of moves at the Trade Deadline to secure the AL Central this year. But that inactivity might not work next time. Which brings us to …
3. The pressure to build off 2022 will increase
Progressive Field has truly been rocking this postseason, particularly in the Guardians' Game 3 victory over the Yankees. There was real electricity there in a way there hadn’t been in a few years. It was great.
But will Cleveland build off it, or let it sit? The roster, in many ways, is set and likely won’t look that different than it did this year … which is of course both a good and bad thing.
This is a good Guardians team, and probably the favorite in the AL Central next year. But a loss in the ALDS -- to the darned Yankees again, no less -- is a sour damper on a thrilling postseason. If the team idles again, will fans be as excited the next time it makes it back here? If it makes it back here?
If the Yankees lose …
1. This might be the end of the Aaron Judge era
The question of whether or not Judge will return to the Bronx after his historic season will dominate baseball’s offseason, with good reason. But seriously, if the Yankees lose Monday and Judge leaves, it has to feel like the end of a fun -- yet fruitless -- era of Yankees baseball.
Remember back in 2017, when Judge and the whole team were young, and the Yankees were exciting and surprising and took the Astros to seven games in the ALCS? Well, if Judge leaves, that group of players will end up like the mini-era before that one: Never getting the Yanks to the World Series.
Considering how much Judge carried the Yankees' offense this year -- particularly down the stretch -- how exactly is this team going to make it back any time soon without him?
2. And it could be the end for Aaron Boone, and perhaps even Brian Cashman
Boone has been the Yankees' manager for five years, with each year thus far ending in the postseason. He’s had a lot of success. But that’s of course not enough in the Bronx.
With a loss Monday, Boone will have reached the ALCS only once in his five seasons and never have gotten to the World Series. He also took more criticism this year than in any other during his Yankees tenure. Will another postseason flop be the end of him?
For that matter … this would be the 13th consecutive season under Cashman’s leadership as general manager that the Yankees didn’t reach the World Series. That has to catch up to him at some point, doesn’t it?
3. The October mystique will take yet another hit
If the Yankees lose to the Guardians at home on Monday, it will be their third consecutive postseason series loss. Since New York won the World Series in 2009, it has played in 17 postseason series. It will have won seven of them, and two in a row only once.
Seven. That’s only one more than the Royals have won during that time. Curt Schilling used to joke about the Yankees’ postseason “aura and mystique.” But how much mystique can the Yanks have if they get knocked out early in the postseason every year?
The Yankees are defined, more than any other franchise, by their postseason success. But their number of World Series titles has been stuck at 27 for a long time, in the context of the franchise's history. Do we have to start thinking of the Yankees as postseason underachievers? Is there any worse insult for the Yankees?