Dodgers Dust Yankees Again, Sweep to Come?

The Yankees came home from a resoundingly unproductive trip to California bloodied, but not beaten. A 2-0 deficit in the World Series is nothing to the Bronx Bombers, who have won four World Series after spotting their opponents two games. (Two of those — 1956 and 1978 — came against the Dodgers, in fact.) That’s more championships than 20 of the 29 other teams have won total.

But a comeback from 3-0? That’s only happened once in major league history — you don’t need to remind the Yankees when — and never in the World Series. So Game 3 was idiomatically, if not literally, a must-win.

From the pregame festivities, in which Fat Joe delivered an unsatisfying sequel to Ice Cube’s performance at Dodger Stadium two days ago, to the first inning, in which two of the first three Dodgers hitters scored, the Yankees were a step behind. The Dodgers, 4-2 winners, are one win from repeating a feat they haven’t achieved since 1963: sweeping the World Series. The Yankee comeback, in the unlikely event it happens at all, will have to start tomorrow.

Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt is a good pitcher with a wide repertoire; most starters in the league would give a kidney to be able to spin a breaking ball the way he does. Unfortunately, spin doesn’t do much good if you can’t locate it. Schmidt threw just 37 of his 68 pitches for strikes. His most problematic offering, unfortunately, was his most common: the cutter. Schmidt missed the zone with 71% of his cutters — most of them high and not particularly close — and the Dodgers didn’t chase a single one. Nor did they swing and miss at a single cutter within the zone. It’s not a fun way to pitch.

Schmidt’s problems manifested themselves immediately. The first batter of the game, Shohei Ohtani, landed awkwardly on a slide late in Game 2, suffering a shoulder subluxation. Going after a hitter with a busted shoulder isn’t quite like a basketball player driving on a defender with a bum ankle, but you might want to check to make sure Ohtani can still swing the bat.

He could, it turns out, though with some discomfort. Ohtani ran the bases resting his left arm against his chest and grabbing his collar, looking like Eric Roberts in Best of the Best. Except we didn’t find that out until later; Schmidt threw four fastballs to Ohtani, none of which came anywhere near the plate. It was the first of four walks he’d issue in just 2 2/3 innings.

There are, unfortunately, worse things that can happen to a poorly located cutter, as Schmidt soon found out:

Sometimes you can identify a home run right off the bat. Less common are home runs you can identify right out of the pitcher’s hand, but this was one of them: 93 mph, up in the zone and over the inside third of the plate. A hitter like Freddie Freeman — who has now homered in a record-tying five straight World Series games, dating back to 2021 — prays to see meatballs like this.

As much as Schmidt probably wants that pitch back (or this entire start), it’s not fair to peg him with sole responsibility for the loss. When he left the game, it was only 3-0 in the third inning, and the Yankees’ bullpen allowed just one run in 6 1/3 innings. Four runs… you’d expect an offense with Juan Soto and Aaron Judge to be able to clear that hurdle, and yet they never even came close to doing so.

Walker Buehler, making what is looking more and more like his last start in a Dodgers uniform, struck out five and allowed just four baserunners in five scoreless innings. In contrast to his opposite number, Buehler did manage a couple whiffs on his fastball (six of them on the four-seamer, one on his cutter), and nine swings and misses total out of 29 Yankees swings.

It wasn’t a dominating start, but it was more than enough. The New York lineup just could not get out of its own way. Soto, Judge, Gleyber Torres, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. combined to go 0-for-13 with four walks, and the Yankees as a whole were down to their last strike before they scored a run.

The Yankees’ offensive struggles, like any slump, are a mix of bad execution, bad luck, and bad decisions. For a microcosm, consider the bottom of the fourth inning.

The first pitch of that frame was a hanging knuckle curve to Judge. As well as Buehler pitched in general, this was a bad mistake, a pitch even fatter than the cutter Freeman had hit out three innings prior. The presumptive AL MVP connected and put it in the air; Yankees radio announcer John Sterling got so excited he went full Bobby Brady on the call. I’m not laughing at Sterling, because I was fooled too. Anyone who’s watched any amount of Judge’s career has seen him hit that pitch 450 feet over and over again. His ability to put a charge into pitches like that is what makes him the most feared hitter in the league.

But this one landed innocuously in Teoscar Hernández’s glove, several paces short of the warning track, let alone the fence. By game’s end, Judge had fallen to 1-for-13 in this World Series with seven strikeouts. He can be streaky, and at inconvenient times. Few teams can hack it in the World Series while getting nothing from their best player.

The next hitter, Giancarlo Stanton, doubled to left, after which Chisholm hit a hard, sinking line drive to right. Had anyone other than Mookie Betts been out there, it likely as not would’ve dropped, and possibly plated Stanton. Instead, Betts made a diving grab to rob Chisholm of a hit. The Yankees third baseman, who hopped up and swore in frustration, knew how valuable that run would’ve been. It would’ve cut the deficit to two, and saved the Yankees from having to stare at that intolerable goose egg on the scoreboard as the pressure mounted.

Also aware of the value of bringing Stanton home: Yankees third base coach Luis Rojas. When Anthony Volpe dumped a Texas Leaguer in front of Hernández for a single, Rojas waved the HMS Stanton in, even though he was only just touching third as Hernández fielded the ball. The Dodgers left fielder didn’t need to go Full Cespedes with his throw; anything accurate would do, and that’s exactly what he provided. Hernández hit Will Smith’s target on one hop, and Stanton was out by plenty:

When you’re not seeing the ball well, the bad breaks sting more, and you start to press. Los Angeles never truly knocked the Yankees out of it — an unsuccessful squeeze bunt in the fourth felt too cute by half, and the Dodgers themselves only had five base hits over nine innings. So when Alex Verdugo hit a two-run homer to cut the lead in half with two outs in the ninth, it was more than just a consolation score.

But it was mostly a consolation score, as Torres grounded out to end the game five pitches later. Having made the Dodgers’ leverage guys work one day before a presumptive bullpen game is cold comfort. There’s no such thing as a moral victory this late in the season.

Sometimes it just isn’t your day. It’s always true in baseball, and the sentiment can be comforting in the Sisyphean toil of August. But the Yankees are out of rope. One more night like this and they’ll be left shrugging all the way home.