By Joshua Garcia
Failure was the word New York Yankees star outfielder Aaron Judge came up with to describe the 2019 season after yet again falling short to the Houston Astros for the second time in the last three seasons. This year’s ALCS was just a tad more painful than the 2017 variety as Yankee faithful who weren’t around for Bill Mazeroski’s walk off homerun in the 1960 World Series were treated to those sentiments last Saturday night at the hands of the 5 foot 6 inch nightmare known as Jose Altuve.
There was little doubt following the six game league championship series, who it’s MVP would be, Jose Altuve as he has wrecked the majors and it’s record over the past few years, continued his dominance as his team struggled to reach an overall batting average of .200 while he sported a .348 average hitting two home runs and accounting for 3 of the most important Houston RBI’s. 103 Yankee wins all wiped away with a swing of Altuve’s bat to take away hopes of a deciding ALCS game seven and a 9th inning game tying home run by DJ Lamaheiu, one of the best moments in New York’s treasured postseason history, a mere forgotten hit.
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Heading into the postseason the worry for the Yankees was their pitching, the lineup was expected to do as it had done all season among the league’s best home run hitting and run producing teams. Well, baseball and October has a special way of turning stats on their head a regression to the mean if you will, and that was the difference for the NY Yankees. In fact the Yankee pitchers ranked second with a team ERA of 2.87 while Houston came in sixth of all the playoff teams with an ERA of 3.49. In terms of run production, New York was one of only two teams to produce 40 runs or more these playoffs, the only team with more (43), will represent the National League in the World Series in the Washington Nationals.
Between games two-four New York had a combined 26 runners left on base, and there is not much need to go further in explaining their shortcoming in the 2019 postseason. The Yankees plain and simple did not produce when it mattered most.
New York had a better team batting average, hit more homeruns, had a better team ERA, but they could not score runners on base the way their counterparts in Houston did. Time and again Carlos Correa with a walk-off in game 2, Jose Altuve with a walk-off in game 6, the Astros did not out hit the Yankees, they out clutched the Yankees. Timeliness of the Houston hits with the efficiency of their defense did the ALCS in for New York. As good as the Yankees were this year, the holes in their game let them down a lot more than the Astros flaws, and Brian Cashman and Yankee brass need to fix it in the offseason, because Houston is not going anywhere for years to come.
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