The Yankees’ Austin Wells finds out what’s going on at 1 a.m., homer in his next at-bat

CLEVELAND— Austin Wells couldn’t sleep after the Yankees blew Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

After midnight Thursday, the rookie catcher was still rattled by his 10-inning loss to the Guardians after the Yankees had two runs, two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning.

Wells was also tired of not helping his team with the bat.

Since Wells had been in dire straits since early September and the Guardians had a left-handed starter in Game 3, coach Aaron Boone chose No. 2 catcher Jose Trevino as the starter.

Wells was annoyed that he wasn’t starting for the first time in the playoffs, then got fed up with himself when he came on late in the game and made both attacks, making it 21 goals in a row.

“I definitely haven’t felt like myself in the last month,” Wells said Friday night after the Yankees beat the Guardians 8-6 in Game 4.

With all of this in mind, Wells didn’t want to try to sleep off his misery.

Instead of resting, Wells had his iPad out and watched the bats as he earned so much in the summer months that he finished August with a .259 average, 12 home runs and a .795 OPS. Then there was some talk in baseball that Wells could beat out Yankees pitcher Luis Gil and Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser for AL rookie of the year.

Wells has been thinking hard about his hitting over the last two months, but he decided it wouldn’t hurt to watch it again and maybe notice something he did then that he doesn’t do now.

Before Wells went to bed after 1 a.m., he noticed something.

“The way I approached the ball wasn’t efficient,” Wells said.

Wells noticed more than that.

“I just felt like they showed me the top of the zone the last month with the way I was pitched,” he said.

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Restore the glory

The next day, he was at Progressive Field early Friday afternoon for an 8 p.m. first pitch and worked on making changes to his cage work and BP hitting that matched what he saw on the video. He was hoping that all of this nightly video work and pregame adjustments would help him hit better and score better in ALCS Game 4, but at the same time he was pessimistic.

“Baseball doesn’t usually work that way when you try to fix something in a day and then get results,” Wells said.

This time they did it.

In his first outing, Wells hit his first postseason career home run to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead.

He also liked his next shot, even though he was chasing a good slider.

“I fouled some fastballs well,” Wells said. “I don’t want to chase them, but it felt good to reach them instead of missing them.”

Wells finished 1-for-4 with a home run, two strikeouts and a Yankees win. This was an improvement from his .111 average in the Sept. 21 games, a stretch that lowered his final average to .229 and his 2-for-26 mark with 12K in the postseason on Friday.

“I think I got away with a few bad swings for a while and then it was exposed and is still being exposed,” he said. “But I feel like I know what I need to do and now it’s just like, ‘It’s about dialing in the top of the zone, not chasing it up and trusting my eyes.’

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Randy Miller can be reached at [email protected]