Passan: An embarrassing Game 3 loss laid the Yankees’ faults bare
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Jeff PassanESPN
NEW YORK — The empty blue seats started to grow in numbers during the sixth inning, by which time it had become abundantly clear that the first two games of the American League Championship Series were no accident or anomaly. The Houston Astros are a better baseball team than the New York Yankees — better at pitching and hitting, better at things big and little, better to the point that those who had arrived at Yankee Stadium for Game 3 looking for a sliver of hope were leaving mid-inning convinced it would not arrive.
They were right. The Astros overwhelmed the Yankees in a 5-0 victory on Saturday night to take a 3-0 series lead, and it’s only a matter of time before Houston razes the remainder of New York’s 2022 season. The game itself served as a microcosm of the American League. The Astros own the league — and no team owns the American League without owning the Yankees too.
However superior the Astros might have looked entering this series, they’ve picked apart the Yankees with such thoroughness, such clinical precision, that those at the stadium no longer knew who exactly to blame. They booed everyone, including Aaron Judge, who this season hit 62 home runs and is going to win AL Most Valuable Player but hasn’t performed near that level this postseason. In the 400 level, they chanted “Fire Cashman,” targeting general manager Brian Cashman, who in the past four full seasons has constructed teams that won 100, 103, 92 and 99 games. These frustrations reinforce the reality that the blessing of 27 championships is likewise a curse that renders itself every year the Yankees don’t win another.
And unless New York does what only one team ever has and comes back from a 3-0 championship series deficit, the Yankees’ drought will reach 13 seasons, the second longest in their history, and they’ll lose their fifth consecutive ALCS, a record for any team.
Most troubling, perhaps, is the conundrum in which the Yankees find themselves. Five years ago, when they met the Astros in the ALCS for the first time, it was supposed to be the start of a new rivalry. And it is — the teams and fan bases share plenty of vitriol — but only because the Astros cheated in 2017. Not because the two teams are competitive — and certainly not evenly matched. They aren’t. Houston won in seven games in 2017 and in six in 2019. New York didn’t even make it far enough to play them in 2018, 2020 or 2021. And this year, now, the Astros are on the cusp of the soundest dismantling yet.
Look at Game 3. The Astros started Cristian Javier, who had thrown all of 1⅓ innings this postseason. That’s not a knock on Javier but a reminder that Houston is so good at developing quality major league pitching, so deep in its rotation and bullpen, that the Astros simply didn’t need to use him yet. Javier carved the Yankees’ lineup. They didn’t hit a ball out of the infield until the fourth inning. New York’s one-two punch was weak contact and strikeouts.
In the meantime, the Astros stared down Gerrit Cole — the ace whom the Yankees poached from Houston with a mega-contract following the 2019 season — and capitalized on the limited opportunities they were given. A two-out error in center field that kept the second inning alive was followed by a Chas McCormick home run. In the sixth, Yankees manager Aaron Boone pulled Cole after he allowed a double, a walk and a ducksnort single — and reliever Lou Trivino allowed all three inherited runners to score.
After Anthony Rizzo walked with one out in the bottom of the inning, Astros manager Dusty Baker pulled his starter too — and Hector Neris wiggled out of it, followed by more scoreless ball from Ryne Stanek, Hunter Brown, Rafael Montero and Bryan Abreu, none of whom played a significant role the previous time these two met in the ALCS. And that, perhaps more than anything, is the most frustrating part to those who left early, who chanted, whose great joy as the Yankees thrived early in this season has melted into a concoction of disappointment, disillusionment and straight-up anger: The Astros, even as they weathered the losses of Cole and George Springer and Carlos Correa and others, have managed to get better; and the Yankees are perpetually stagnant, a simulacrum of the late-1990s dynasty to which every Yankees team is bound to be compared.
This year, the team seemed to rely almost entirely on Judge, which is even scarier when you remember that Game 4 could be his final game as a Yankee. He will hit free agency after the World Series ends. If the Yankees re-sign him, it will cost perhaps $40 million a year well into his 30s, the sort of contract that could limit the other areas in which they need to improve so long as the team doesn’t extend its budget. And if they don’t, gone is their greatest source of offense, which this series suggests might be a problem even with him.
In three ALCS games, the Yankees have scored four runs. They are batting .128. Their on-base plus slugging (.435) is lower than the Astros’ slugging percentage by itself (.446). The Yankees have struck out 41 times as compared to 19 by Houston. They’ve homered twice, while the Astros have hit five home runs. It’s three games, yes, and drawing large conclusions from small samples is folly, sure. But what is playoff baseball if not a small sample? And if the only number that truly matters to the Yankees is 28 — their next championship — then nobody in the organization can look at this series as anything less than a failure.
After Game 3, as much as the Yankees players gritted their teeth and vowed to fight and promised to hunt for whatever it took to turn this series around, to do to Houston what the Boston Red Sox did to them in 2004, they recognize the herculean nature of the task. The Yankees’ offense is flawed, yes, but even more than that, the Astros’ pitching is a juggernaut. As easy as it is for those who left early — and those who stayed to the end and grumbled all the way — to blame the Yankees’ hitting, crediting the Astros’ pitching is only fair.
It’s not satisfying, though. Unless the Yankees take Games 4 and 5 and force a trip back to Houston to put at least a little pressure on the Astros, this is the sort of series that sticks with an organization. Minus the injuries that whittled the Yankees’ bullpen down to a shell of itself — and that can’t be ignored — this is mostly the roster the team envisioned using as it went for title No. 28. The Astros are telling New York, unequivocally, it’s not enough.
Which leaves the Yankees in an uncomfortable place: Not only are they perpetually chasing the Astros, their road to face Houston seems only to get harder. They’re contending with a Tampa Bay Rays team that is excellent annually and a Toronto Blue Jays team hungry for more and a Red Sox team certain to rebound and a Baltimore Orioles team that’s on the come up — and that’s just in their own division. Nobody is going to cry for the Yankees, but nobody should suggest their path is easy, either.
Easier, because of the money, the resources, the desire for many of the best to play in pinstripes? Sure. That’s fair. And it’s why so much schadenfreude accompanies every early exit from the Yankees. Losing doesn’t change who they’ve been. It just reinforces what they are. Now, today, that’s a lesser team than the Houston Astros.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea has promoted Steve Gregory to defensive coordinator and Nick Lezynski to co-defensive coordinator, the school announced Monday.
Lea served as his own defensive coordinator last season after he demoted the previous coordinator, Nick Howell, following the 2023 season.
Gregory was associate defensive coordinator and secondary coach. He joined Vanderbilt following five seasons as an NFL assistant.
Lezynski is entering his fourth season at Vanderbilt. He was hired as linebackers coach and was promoted to defensive run game coordinator in 2023.
Under Lea’s direction, Gregory and Lezynski helped the Vanderbilt defense show marked improvement. The scoring defense rose from 126th in 2023 to 50th in 2024 and rushing defense from 104th to 52nd. Vanderbilt held consecutive opponents under 100 rushing yards (Virginia Tech and Alcorn State) for the first time since 2017, and a 17-7 win over Auburn marked the lowest point total by an SEC opponent since 2015.
The Commodores were 7-6, their first winning record since 2013.
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Adam Rittenberg
Texas is targeting former West Virginia and Troy coach Neal Brown for a role on its 2025 coaching staff, a source confirmed to ESPN.
The role is still to be determined, and a deal is not finalized but could be soon, the source said. Brown spent the past six seasons coaching West Virginia and went 37-35 before being fired in December. He went 35-16 at Troy with a Sun Belt championship in 2017.
247 Sports first reported Texas targeting Brown.
The 44-year-old Brown spent time in the state as offensive coordinator at Texas Tech from 2010 to 2012. He also held coordinator roles at Troy and Kentucky.
After back-to-back College Football Playoff appearances, Texas is set to open spring practice March 17.
Florida State and Clemson will vote Tuesday on an agreement that would ultimately result in the settlement of four ongoing lawsuits between the schools and the ACC and a new revenue-distribution strategy that would solidify the conference’s membership for the near future, sources told ESPN on Monday.
The ACC board of directors is scheduled to hold a call Tuesday to go over the settlement terms. In addition, Florida State and Clemson have both called board meetings to present the terms at noon ET Tuesday. All three boards must agree to the settlement for it to move forward, but sources throughout the league expect a deal to be reached.
According to sources, the settlement includes two key objectives: establishing a new revenue-distribution model based on viewership and a change in the financial penalties for exiting the league’s grant of rights before its conclusion in June 2036.
This new revenue-distribution model — or “brand initiative” — is based on a five-year rolling average of TV ratings, though some logistics of this formula remain tricky, including how to properly average games on the unrated ACC Network or other subscription channels. The brand initiative will be funded through a split in the league’s TV revenue, with 40% distributed evenly among the 14 longstanding members and 60% going toward the brand initiative and distributed based on TV ratings.
Top earners are expected to net an additional $15 million or more, according to sources, while some schools will see a net reduction in annual payout of up to about $7 million annually, an acceptable loss, according to several administrators at schools likely to be impacted, in exchange for some near-term stability.
The brand initiative is expected to begin for the coming fiscal year.
The brand fund, combined with the separate “success initiatives” fund approved in 2023 and enacted last year that rewards schools for postseason appearances, would allow teams that hit necessary benchmarks in each to close the revenue gap with the SEC and Big Ten, possibly adding in the neighborhood of $30 million or more annually should a school make a deep run in the College Football Playoff or NCAA basketball tournament and lead the way in TV ratings.
The success initiatives are funded largely through money generated by the new expanded College Football Playoff and additional revenue generated by the additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU, each of which is taking a reduced portion of TV money over the next six to eight years, while the new brand initiative will involve some schools in the conference receiving less TV revenue than before.
As a result of their inclusion in the College Football Playoff this past season, SMU athletic director Rick Hart said, the Mustangs and Tigers each earned $4 million through the success initiatives.
Sources have suggested Clemson and Florida State would be among the biggest winners of this brand-based distribution, though North Carolina and Miami are others expected to come out with a higher payout. Georgia Tech was actually the ACC’s highest-rated program in 2024, based in part on a Week 0 game against Florida State and a seven-overtime thriller against Georgia on the final Friday of the regular season.
Basketball ratings will be included in the brand initiative, too, but at a smaller rate than football, which is responsible for about 75% of the league’s TV revenue.
If ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is able to get this to the finish line Tuesday, it would be a big win for him and for the conference during a time of unprecedented change in collegiate athletics — particularly for a league that many speculated would break apart when litigation between the ACC and Florida State and Clemson began in 2023.
Both schools would consider it a win as well after they decided to file lawsuits in their home states in hopes of extricating themselves from a grant of rights agreement that, according to Florida State’s attorneys, could have meant paying as much as $700 million to leave the conference. The ACC countersued both schools to preserve the grant of rights agreement through 2036.
Although the settlement will not make substantive changes to the grant of rights, it is expected that there will be declining financial penalties for schools that exit before 2036, with the steepest decreases coming after 2030 — something that would apply to any ACC school, not just Clemson and Florida State.
The specific financial figures for schools to get released from the grant of rights were not readily available. But the total cost to exit the league after the 2029-30 season is expected to drop below $100 million, sources said.
The current language would require any school exiting before June 2036 to pay three times the operating budget — a figure that would be about $120 million — plus control of that team’s media rights through the conclusion of the grant of rights.
This was seen as a critical piece to the settlement, allowing flexibility for ACC schools amid a shifting college football landscape, particularly beyond the 2030 season, when TV deals for the Big Ten (2029-30), Big 12 (2030) and the next iteration of the College Football Playoff (2031) come up for renewal — a figure Florida State’s attorneys valued at more than $500 million over 10 years.
Sources told ESPN that there’d just be one number to exit the league, not the combination estimated by FSU of a traditional exit fee and the loss of media from the grant of rights.
In addition to securing the success and brand initiatives, viewed within the league as progressive ideas to help incentivize winning, Phillips also guided the recently announced ESPN option pickup to continue broadcasting the ACC through 2036.
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