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Yankees lose in wild thriller, so where will the Rays play now?

Yankees lose in wild thriller, so where will the Rays play now?

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An instant classic. A pretty boring route. And where the hell are the Rays even going to play next year? I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!

ALCS Game 3: Another chaotic October classic

Guardians 7, Yankees 5: How many Game of the Year candidates can a postseason contain?

Through the first seven innings, it looked like a perfect plan for a Guardians win: Take an early lead and then let your bullpen squeeze the life out of the Yankees’ lineup. Cleveland even managed an insurance run in the sixth to make it 3-1.

After that it became theater. Frenetic, combustible theater.

With the league’s best closer on the mound and the best hitter at the plate, the immovable object gave way to unstoppable force. Aaron Judge’s home run off Emmanuel Clase tied the game at 3-3. And then, when the dam was broken, Giancarlo Stanton managed to take the lead with two consecutive home runs.

(Side note: If you’re a fan of baseball symmetry, you’ll love this: As Tyler Kepner pointed out, Judge’s home run landed in the same spot as Sandy Alomar’s game-winning home run against Mariano Rivera in 1997.)

In the bottom of the 8th inning, with two runners on, Yankees manager Aaron Boone made the same decision as Stephen Vogt: bottom out in the 8th inning. Luke Weaver temporarily escaped the jam. But his fate was the same as Clase’s, only he delayed an inning. With the score 5-3 and two outs in the ninth, Jhonkensy Noel hit a monster home run to tie the game, send it to extra innings, and post ten thousand Christmas memes.

Enough drama? NO? How about this play in the 10th inning by Andres Giménez and Josh Naylor?

And then came the finisher — not the Guardians’ typical scheme, but not unprecedented this postseason — a home run by David Fry, this time a walk-off in the 10th inning, that put the Guardians in the win column for the first time in the series. They’re still alive.

The madness continues tonight with Game 4: Luis Gil vs. Gavin Williams (8:08 p.m. ET, TBS).

More from this game: “Feliz Navidad!” Jhonkensy Noel’s Game 3 ALCS home run inspires an epic Spanish radio call.

Ken’s notebook: Dodgers are just too much for the Mets

No Freddie Freeman, no Tommy Edman in the cleanup spot, Andy Pages and Chris Taylor in eighth and ninth. And yet the Los Angeles Dodgers scored 10 runs.

As many suspected, the Dodgers-San Diego Padres Division Series game was for the National League championship. The New York Mets are not as talented or as deep as the Padres. The Dodgers have outscored the Mets 30-9 in four games.

There is a way for the Mets to recover from a three games to one deficit. Win an all-hands-on-deck bullpen game behind David Peterson and Kodai Senga in Game 5. Failing a Dodgers bullpen game in Game 6 for the second time in the series rematch between Luis Severino and Walker Buehler.

Okay, the chances of any of this happening seem pretty slim.

Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, the Dodgers’ 1-2 hitters, were on base a combined eight times in Game 4 on Thursday night. Max Muncy tied Reggie Jackson’s postseason record by getting on base for the 12th straight time. Edman recorded two run-scoring doubles and improved to 7-of-16 in the NLCS.

Yet for all their individual accomplishments, the Dodgers are at their most dominant as a collective, as evidenced by their 31 walks in the Series, the most in a four-game postseason span. It’s true that Mets pitchers drew the third-highest number of walks in the league during the regular season. But this is less about the Mets and more about the Dodgers, who had the second-lowest chase rate in the league. Grinding jugs is part of their organizational DNA. And the alternative for the Mets pitchers – throwing more strikes – isn’t such a good idea, considering the Dodgers are batting .333 (16-for-48) with an OPS of .942 and the runners in the series are the Score points.

The Dodgers joined the 1960 New York Yankees on Thursday night to become the only team in National League/American League history to win three games by more than eight runs in a single postseason series (the Yankees accomplished this in the World Series). The Mets are proud of their rotation, which ranked fifth in the majors in ERA after the All-Star break. In this series, their starters have pitched 14 1/3 innings in four games.

Another stat to consider: According to Sarah Langs, the Dodgers’ +21 run differential is the most any team has ever achieved in the first four games of a postseason series.

If the Mets somehow win the next three games, it would be one of the most impressive turnarounds in playoff history. Nobody should expect that. The Dodgers are just too good.

Time for ideas: Where will the Rays play in 2025?

A few days ago we linked to a Tampa Bay Times article that said the roof at Tropicana Field won’t be ready for Opening Day next year. In it, Marc Topkin presents the possible options:

  • One of the many minor league fields in the area. From a geographical perspective, this is a sensible option, but it comes with challenges: not only would there be scheduling conflicts, but also that none of the fields would be covered. How big is the problem? Well, the rainy season in Florida lasts six months. The wrong six months.
  • They could glide across the state with the Marlins and live together for a while, which would solve the weather issues but not the schedules. It’s possible that there will be numerous day/night doubleheaders involving four different teams.
  • Do you remember a few years ago when there was a tentative plan – since scrapped – to play half the season in Montreal? The downside: Rays fans would have a hard time seeing their team in person. The Advantage: Expos City Connect jerseys, come on, make it happen.

But the thing I’d most like to see is what the MLB almost certainly wouldn’t allow. There are a recently vacated MLB stadium across the country in Oakland. There’s a fan base in the area that loves baseball and their team just got ripped apart. I think the funniest outcome would be if the Rays played in Oakland in 2025 and the fans in Oakland promoted the team, if for no other reason than to prove to John Fisher and the MLB that it was right from the start was a viable market.

Another NLCS note: Blowouts can still produce fun facts

Due to Ken’s dominance as described above, this NLCS was a bit boring.

Sure, the Mets won in Game 2, but even that was a 7-3 game that was 6-0 after the second inning. The Dodgers’ victories — 9-0, 8-0 and 10-2 — were excellent displays of Los Angeles’ talent, but lacked any semblance of intrigue.

Not so fast. Luckily we are here The athlete Share a workspace with Jayson Stark. That’s right, this is a series that only a Weird & Wild author could love. And this series actually has some oddities.

Grand Slam improbabilities? Everything is covered. Kiké Hernandez ties Babe Ruth for postseason home runs and Ohtani’s absolutely impossible runners-on-base stretch? Consider it done. The Ohtani and Betts duo make history? They know Jayson is there. The Dodgers are now just one win away from an NL pennant. Jack Flaherty will do the honors as David Peterson tries to keep the Mets’ season alive (5:08 p.m. ET, FS1).

Handshakes and high fives

The Astros have a lot of tough decisions to make this offseason. Chandler Rome suggests that one consideration should be trading Framber Váldez.

JT Realmuto will be 34 years old in 2025. Matt Gelb explores the question (among other things): Is it time to give him a few more days off in Philadelphia?

Keith Law was in Arizona watching the Fall League. He reports what he has seen so far.

Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Yu Darvish in the same game? It’s no surprise that Game 5 of the NLDS was watched by more people in Japan than any previous MLB game.

(Top photo: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)