‘Something special here’: Yankees back in ALCS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was picture time, and the most important person was nowhere to be seen. The New York Yankees had just dispatched the Kansas City Royals from the postseason and advanced to the American League Championship Series with a 3-1 victory Thursday night, and everyone gathered on the mound at Kauffman Stadium to memorialize the moment except for one person. So they started chanting his name.

“Ger-rit Co-le,” they repeated, with a clap-clap-clapclapclap in between, the same chant with which Yankees fans had serenaded him in the immediate aftermath of the win. And when Gerrit Cole, brought to New York specifically for moments like this, finally arrived, the Yankees broke out into a cheer and could properly capture the aftermath of a series that made them look as dangerous as they have in years.

Cole stifled the Royals for seven innings, allowing one run in a Game 4 victory that resembled their win the previous night: excellent pitching, strong defense and enough hitting to advance to their 19th ALCS. The best team in the AL during the regular season barely stumbled in its division series, stealing a pair of game in Kansas City to secure its spot in the ALCS, with Game 1 on Monday night at Yankee Stadium against the winner of the Detroit-Cleveland ALDS Game 5 on Saturday.

“We played a really good brand of baseball in this series,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.

In Game 4, it started with Cole, the 34-year-old right-hander who missed the first 2½ months of the season with elbow issues. From the first inning, when he was heaving 98 mph fastballs, to his final out, when Kansas City’s Kyle Isbel sent a 97 mph heater to the warning track, Cole conjured his Cy Young self. Teammates had seen him in the aftermath of their 3-2 victory the previous day and foretold a vintage Cole outing coming by his gaze.

“It’s a piercing look,” Yankees catcher Jose Trevino said. “And he had it [Wednesday] night, after the last out. I was like, ‘I’ve seen those eyes before, Ace. I’ve seen those eyes before.’ I mean, he was ready.”

New York staked Cole to a 1-0 lead three pitches into the game when Gleyber Torres doubled on the first pitch from Royals starter Michael Wacha and Juan Soto drove him in with a single two pitches later. Torres drove in the Yankees’ second run in the fifth inning, shooting a single to right field that scored Alex Verdugo and chased Wacha from the game.

Cole, in the meantime, continued to cruise, allowing only two hits — both to Tommy Pham — through five innings. The sixth offered more of the great brand of baseball of which Boone spoke. With Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia on first after a leadoff single, leadoff hitter Michael Massey smashed a Cole curveball to first base. Jon Berti, who had never played first base before Game 2 of the series and was forced there by an injury to Anthony Rizzo, fielded it, stepped on first for the force out, wheeled and fired a seed to shortstop Anthony Volpe, who tagged Garcia for a double play.

The slide and tag were both firm, and as Garcia stood up, he glanced toward Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm, who had drawn the ire of Kansas City fans — and Garcia on social media — for calling the Royals’ Game 2 victory “lucky.” When Chisholm started talking to Garcia, the benches and bullpens emptied, and umpires needed to separate the sides.

“He should know that he did the wrong thing right there being a sore loser,” Chisholm told ESPN. “Coming in as rough as he came in — that’s sore loser stuff. We don’t do that over here. I would never do anything like that. I would never slide into a player. No player has ever complained about me trying to injure them on the field, and I don’t take that, and I’m always going to back my boys. So when he got up, I saw him and Volpe talking, but I don’t take that lightly because if he got hurt, we’ve got to go find another shortstop. That’s not cool. We wouldn’t do that to Bobby Witt Jr. So I would expect an apology from him. But if he doesn’t, that’s OK. He can be a sore loser.”

Through an interpreter, Garcia told reporters: “I don’t have anything against him, I just saw that he said something. I don’t know what he said, just saw that he did.”

The contretemps invigorated Kansas City. Witt, the Royals star who had struggled during the series, laced a two-out single to right field, and Vinnie Pasquantino drove him home with a double to the left-center-field gap the cut Kansas City’s deficit to 3-1.

Boone stuck with Cole in the seventh — and was feet from regretting it. Isbel’s drive to right field would have been a home run in 24 of 30 major league stadiums — “My heart skipped a beat,” Boone said afterward — but Kauffman’s large dimensions saved Cole, who allowed six hits, didn’t walk a batter and struck out four over 87 pitches.

He ceded to Clay Holmes, who pitched a scoreless eighth, and Luke Weaver, the former Royal who saved all three of the division series victories for the Yankees. They celebrated on the field and then retired to the clubhouse, where they sprayed bubbly and drank beer and wondered whether this could be the team to break the 14-year championship drought that, designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton said, drives these Yankees.

“The weight of the wait since 2009,” said Stanton, who followed his Game 3 heroics with two more hits in Game 4. “You can’t run from reality, so you know what’s at stake, you know what we need to do. So it ain’t about rankings, it ain’t about who’s supposed to this and that. We got to go out and do it every night.”

If they do it like they did in the division series, the Yankees will be a tough out. Their relievers threw 15⅔ scoreless innings. Their batters, recognizing that patience is baseball’s utmost virtue, drew 27 walks in four games. They also know enough to know that one great series does not a ring-fitting make.

“There’s so much baseball left,” Cole said. “I mean, we’re obviously confident, right? We’re focused. We’re trying to improve the brand of baseball that we’re playing as we continue to get deeper into October. Even when you’re banged up, you feel the same way. That’s your job. You’ve got to just get after the ball regardless of what you have.”

What the Yankees have, it turns out, is something more than just the Aaron Judge and Juan Soto Show. Soto played well in the series, and Judge, after struggling early, laced a double and walked twice in Game 4. With one other American League Central team left to conquer for the Yankees to return to the World Series, Judge said, “There’s something special here. I think we got a little bit of the ghost from the old stadium, a little bit of magic there, too.”

Others are thinking of the potential for something even bigger. Two teams have advanced to their league championship series, and both are from New York. And with all the connections between the New York baseball clubs — former Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza manages the Mets while recent Yankees Luis Severino and Harrison Bader play for them — both know they’re four victories from something that has happened just once.

“I’ve been saying it, texting with Bader a lot,” Rizzo said. “Manifesting a Subway Series.”