CLEVELAND — Each foul ball felt like a countdown to lift off.
In the top of the 10th inning of a tied ALCS Game 5, Juan Soto was entrenched in the kind of battle he had won so many times before. Hunter Gaddis was on the hill, the latest — and, ultimately, last — Cleveland reliever tasked with taming a Yankees lineup that features a flatly overwhelming amount of firepower.
Two batters earlier, Alex Verdugo had hit a ground ball to second baseman Andrés Giménez that appeared primed to be an inning-ending double play. But shortstop Brayan Rocchio was unable to handle Gimenez’s hurried, underhand toss. A play that could have resulted in two outs produced none. It was an error at the worst possible time from two of the best middle-infield defenders on the planet, and it left Gaddis with two outs still to wrangle. After he struck out Gleyber Torres, it was Soto who stood in the way of Gaddis keeping the game — and the season — alive for the Guardians.
Gaddis went at Soto with soft stuff, mixing sliders and changeups in different locations in hopes of garnering a whiff or weak contact. Soto fought off each offering, gradually tilting the at-bat in his favor as he gathered information and redirected the pressure toward Gaddis to attack with something straighter.
On the seventh pitch — and the first fastball of the at-bat — Soto connected cleanly. But the ball was struck with an ultra-steep 37-degree launch angle, sending it soaring up toward outer space, back-spinning into the night sky while everyone earthbound watched and waited. For six and a half seconds, the entire ballpark — and an eager Yankees fan base watching around the world — wondered if Soto had just hit a home run to send New York to the World Series for the first time in 15 years.
As if there was really any doubt.
As one of just three active Yankees who have been to the World Series, alongside Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo, Soto has charted this path before. He understands what is required to make a deep October run, and he has regularly delivered in the biggest moments of the biggest games. Still just 25 years old — he’ll turn 26 on Friday, the day the World Series begins — Soto has already produced a career’s worth of heart-stopping homers and clutch hits.
And on Saturday in Cleveland — once that towering fly ball finally landed beyond the center-field wall, giving New York a 5-2 lead it wouldn’t relinquish — Soto produced arguably his most memorable swing yet.
Roughly 90 minutes before Soto scraped the moon with his long ball, Giancarlo Stanton — a legendary October performer in his own right — hit a very different kind of home run, the kind Stanton usually hits: a ludicrous laser beam that practically teleported from his bat to its eventual landing place well beyond the outfield fence.
For five-plus innings, Guardians ace Tanner Bibee was cruising, having answered the call on short rest and provided the makings of a quality start when his team desperately needed one. The Guardians were hoping for length from Bibee in Game 5 after the previous two games taxed their bullpen to the extreme.
As a result, Bibee was given the chance to face the top of the New York lineup for a third time to open the sixth inning. After Torres and Soto reached base to start the frame, Bibee coaxed a double play from Aaron Judge to lessen the threat and get within one out of escaping unscathed.
Up came the dangerous Stanton as the tying run.
Stanton swung through a slider and a changeup to fall into a quick 0-2 hole. The next three pitches, though, were nowhere near the zone. With the count full, catcher Bo Naylor set up outside in hopes that Bibee could get Stanton to chase a slider. But the slider didn’t slide quite enough. And against Stanton — as we’ve seen on several occasions this month — such a mistake can have devastating consequences.
Kaboom. Gone. If Soto’s homer took what felt like an eternity to come down, Stanton’s was the complete opposite. The instant contact was made, the outcome was determined. The ball was plainly vaporized, sent screaming on a line from home plate into the left-field bleachers to tie the game.
Stanton had struck out in his previous two at-bats against Bibee, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. As manager Aaron Boone explained before the game when asked what makes Stanton different, Stanton is exceptionally good at applying what he learns from each successive at-bat against the same pitcher.
“He’s just incredibly disciplined, his approach, his process, how he studies guys,” Boone said. “One thing we’ve talked about a lot over the years … he, more than most, when he sees pitchers over and over, really benefits. So I think he processes when he faces people … He’s shown in his career that he benefits just about more than anyone.”
“There’s something that he does when he gets familiarity with people, on top of being very physically gifted.”
It is those physical gifts that allow Stanton to hit the ball harder than possibly any player in the history of the game. His Game 5 homer left the bat at 117.5 mph. Since Statcast began tracking batted ball speed in 2015, no player has produced more home runs with at least a 117 mph exit velocity than Stanton with 22. His teammate Judge ranks a distant second with 10.
“He can hit it harder than anyone, so there’s the physical nature of what he does that’s different than just about everyone in the world,” Boone said.
While Stanton’s swing merely tied the game, it injected a level of confidence and energy into the Yankees dugout that would sustain all the way until Soto put them ahead. It was also the swing that certified what was likely already the case: Stanton was the ALCS MVP. His four home runs in the series brought his career total in October to 16 in just 36 games — an astounding eight of which have come against Cleveland. Only Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Randy Arozarena boast a higher postseason slugging percentage for a career than Stanton.
Six years before the Yankees swung a blockbuster deal to land Soto, it was Stanton who was acquired via trade with hopes that his big bat could help propel New York back to the promised land. So much has transpired in the years since, with a bevy of other titanic transactions executed in search of the roster that could finally break through. It is those repeated near-misses that continue to motivate the Yankees to swing big for superstars when they become available, with Soto — whose pending free agency is this winter’s $500 million question — the most recent example.
While Soto managed to deliver the goods in his first year as a Yankee, Stanton has had to wait. But now they are teammates, and in one game, they combined to provide two swings that sent the Yankees, as general manager Brian Cashman put it while receiving the AL championship trophy, back where they belong.
“I didn’t plan for it to take this long,” Stanton said amidst the postgame celebration in the Yankees clubhouse. “But we’re here now, and this is exactly what I came here for.”