October 15, 2022: Cleveland’s ninth-inning rally stuns Yankees in Game 3 of ALDS

Many expected 2022 to be a rebuilding year for the Cleveland Guardians. The youngest team in baseball, the Guardians (92-70) surprised the experts by posting a major league-best 21-8 record in September and capturing the American League’s Central Division title for the first time in four seasons.1

Cleveland defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series, winning both games at Progressive Field by a run, 2-1 and 1-0. Rookie outfielder Oscar González hit a home run in the bottom of the 15th inning of the series-clinching game, earning the Guardians a trip to New York to face the Yankees in the AL Division Series.2

The Yankees had won the AL East Division for the first time since 2019 and received a first-round bye in the playoffs. New York’s 99-63 record was the second-best in the league, trailing only the AL West Division champion Houston Astros (106-56). Powered by Aaron Judge’s AL record 62 home runs, the Yankees led the AL in runs (807) and the major leagues in home runs (254). By contrast, the Guardians scored 698 runs (sixth in the AL), and Cleveland’s 127 homers ranked 29th out of 30 major league teams.

The first two games of the best-of-five ALDS were played at Yankee Stadium. New York won Game One, 4-1. Gerrit Cole’s strong pitching performance (eight strikeouts in 6⅓ innings) was backed by home runs by Harrison Bader and Anthony Rizzo. Cleveland pitchers held Judge to one walk and three strikeouts.

The Guardians evened the series with a 4-2 win in the second game. New York took an early lead on Giancarlo Stanton’s first-inning, two-run homer, but the Guardians scored single runs in the fourth and fifth to tie the score, 2-2. González’s single drove in the go-ahead run in the 10th, and he scored an insurance run when the next batter doubled. Cleveland pitchers were again able to handle Judge, who struck out four times before grounding out in his last at-bat.

Aaron Boone dropped Judge from the leadoff position in the lineup to the second spot for the third game. “Judge has hit a lot of second in his career, and just wanted to shake that up a bit,” said the Yankee manager.3

Temperatures hovered in the low 50s as the series moved to Cleveland for the 7:30 P.M. start of the third game.4 Triston McKenzie (11-11, 2.96 ERA), a 24-year-old right-hander, took the mound for the Guardians with 36,843 spectators in attendance. McKenzie’s last start was one week earlier in the second game against Tampa Bay. He pitched six shutout innings, allowing only two singles and striking out eight.

McKenzie pitched a scoreless first inning, yielding only a two-out walk to Rizzo. Moving Judge down in the batting order didn’t seem to matter as he struck out for the eighth time in the series.

New York’s 28-year-old starter Luis Severino (7-3, 3.18 ERA in 19 games) was an All-Star pitcher for the Yankees in 2017 and 2018. The right-hander had suffered through three injury-plagued seasons before making a comeback in 2022. A lat strain forced him to miss two months, but he returned in September to pitch three late-season games. In his last start on October 3, Severino threw seven no-hit innings against the Texas Rangers, walking only one and striking out seven.5

Severino struggled in the first two innings. Steven Kwan doubled to start Cleveland’s half of the first. With one out, José Ramírez singled to shallow right, moving Kwan to third. Josh Naylor hit a one-hopper past shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s back-handed attempt, driving in Kwan. Severino limited the damage to one run after a flyout and a strikeout but threw 31 pitches in the inning.

After the Yankees were retired in order in the second, Gabriel Arias hit a leadoff double for the Guardians and took third on Austin Hedges’ single. One out later, Kwan lined a single to right-center, scoring Aries with Hedges moving to second. Severino again limited the damage to one run after a flyout to deep center field and a lineout to deep right, but the inning added another 25 pitches to his count.

McKenzie struck out the first Yankee batter in the third. Oswaldo Cabrera doubled and moved to third on a lineout to deep center. Judge, batting for the first time in the series with a runner on base, drove a 2-and-1 fastball 449 feet over the center field wall, tying the score at 2-2.6

Severino retired the Guardians in order in the next two innings, throwing only 12 pitches in the third and 11 in the fourth. McKenzie kept pace in the fourth, retiring the Yankees on 10 pitches, but ran into trouble in the fifth. Bader grounded a leadoff single up the middle. After the next batter struck out, Cabrera hit a high fastball into the right-field stands, putting the Yankees ahead, 4-2.7

Severino pitched a perfect fifth and retired the first two Cleveland batters in the sixth. After retiring 13 batters in a row since the Guardians scored in the second inning, he allowed consecutive, two-strike singles by Andrés Giménez and Aries. With runners on first and third, Lou Trivino relieved Severino, who left after throwing 106 pitches. Will Brennen pinch-hit for Hedges and singled to right, scoring Giménez and cutting New York’s margin to one run, 4-3.

The Yankees got the run back against Sam Hentges, who relieved McKenzie at the beginning of the sixth inning. With one out in the seventh, Bader hit Hentges’ 2-and-1 pitch high over the left-field wall to put New York back up, 5-3.

The score remained 5-3 as the Guardians came to bat in the ninth. In their postseason history, the Yankees had never lost when entering the ninth inning leading by two or more runs, a span covering 167 games dating back to the team’s first World Series appearance in 1921.8

Wandy Peralta, pitching his second inning, retired the first Cleveland batter on a short fly to right. Myles Straw hit a blooper to left. Cabrera tried to make a sliding catch, but the ball rolled past him for a double.9 Kwan lined a single to short left, his third hit of the game, moving Straw to third.

Clarke Schmidt relieved Peralta.10 Rosario singled between short and third, scoring Straw. With runners at first and second, Ramírez looped a soft liner to short. Kiner-Falefa, playing behind second base, backhanded the ball on one hop on the outfield grass, but could not make a play on any of the runners. The bases were loaded.

Schmidt struck out Naylor on three pitches for the second out, and González came to bat with the opportunity to join David Ortiz as the only players in major league history to drive in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning or later three times in a single postseason.11 The lone Guardian starter who remained hitless on the day, he was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Behind on the count, 1-and-2, González swung at a low, outside pitch from Schmidt and lined a single up the middle.12 Kwan and Rosario scored the tying and winning runs in Cleveland’s 6-5 comeback victory.

The Yankees hit three home runs but were limited to five hits.13 The homerless Guardians had 15 hits, 12 of which were singles. “Yeah, it was just another Guards win,” said Hedges. “There’s a reason there’s nine innings, there’s 27 outs, and we only needed 26 of them today.”14

A New York sportswriter said the game brought back memories of recent Yankee postseason failures against Cleveland, such as Game Four of the 1997 ALDS, Game Two of the 2007 ALDS, and Game Two of the 2017 ALDS.15

Boone was asked if the nature of the loss could carry over to the next game. “Hell, no,” he said. “It stings right now, and it’s raw. You’re frustrated because you’re so close to the end there, but we got to turn the page. We got Gerrit going tomorrow. We expect to come out here and win.”16

The Yankees evened the series the next day with a 4-2 win behind another strong performance from Cole (seven strikeouts in seven innings) and Bader’s third home run of the series. Back in New York for the winner-take-all fifth game, a two-run homer by Stanton in the first inning and a solo home run by Judge in the second gave the Yankees an early lead. New York won 5-1. In the ALCS, the eventual World Series champion Astros swept New York in four games.17

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas E. Merrick and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.  

Photo credit: Oscar González, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. for box scores/play-by-play information, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting game logs, and other data:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE202210150.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2022/B10150CLE2022.htm

The author also accessed YouTube.com, “Yankees vs. Guardians Game 3 Highlights (10/15/22),”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ktcu_I1Ly8

Notes

1 Paul Hoynes, “Francona: Guardians Earned the Right ‘To Blow It out’,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 26, 2022: B3. 2022 was the first year the franchise operated under the name Guardians. The average age of Cleveland’s position players was 25.9 years, two years younger than the AL’s average of 27.9. New York’s position players averaged 30.2 years old. The average age of Cleveland’s pitching staff was 26.3, compared to the league’s average of 28.4 and New York’s 29.2.

2 The 2022 ALDS matchup between New York and Cleveland was the sixth time the teams met in the postseason. They would also face each other in the 2024 ALCS. The seven postseason matchups between the two teams are tied for the second most (the Giants-Yankees have also met seven times) behind 12 Dodgers-Yankees World Series matchups. Sarah Langs, “The 14 Most Common Postseason Matchups,” MLB.com, October 9, 2025, https://www.mlb.com/news/most-common-postseason-matchups. A complete history through 2024 of the Cleveland-New York postseason series is provided by Manny Randhawa, “Yankees Prevail in Latest Postseason Showdown with Guardians,” MLB.com, October 20, 2024, https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-guardians-postseason-history. The Yankees have won five of the seven postseason series.

3 “Judge Busts out of Funk with Homer,” Buffalo News, October 16, 2022: D9. Boone also moved Rizzo from second to third in the batting order, Oswaldo Cabrera from sixth to ninth, Isiah Kiner-Falefa from seventh to sixth, and Bader from ninth to seventh.

4 “Cleveland Weather Today,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 16, 2022: A2.

5 Kristie Ackert, “No-No, No-Way,” New York Daily News, October 4, 2022: 41.

6 James Wagner, “Yanks Blow 2-Run Lead in the 9th,” New York Times, October 16, 2022: 41N.

7 “Yanks Blow 2-Run Lead in the 9th.”

8 Mandy Bell, “Another Oscar Winner! Guardians Walk Off, Take 2-1 ALDS lead,” MLB.com, October 16, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/guardians-win-alds-game-3-2022.

9 Terry Pluto, “Winning Rally again: You Can Never Give up on These Guardians,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 16, 2022: C1.

10 “Boone & Clay on the same page in end,” New York Daily News, October 17, 2022: 38. Clay Holmes led the Yankees in saves with 20 during the season. He pitched in relief in both games in New York, throwing 10 pitches in the first game and 16 in the second game. Since he was coming off an earlier shoulder strain, Boone was hesitant to use him in the third game. Clay was used in Games Four and Five. For the series he worked 3⅓ innings allowing no hits or runs, with three strikeouts, two walks, and a hit batter.

11 Joe Noga, “Sandy’s Gonna Need a New Belt,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 17, 2022: B3. Ortiz did it in the 2004 postseason with Boston. In Game Three of the ALDS against the Anaheim Angels, he hit a game-winning, two-run homer in the bottom of the 10th inning. Against the Yankees in the ALCS, he hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the 12th in Game Four, and singled in Game Five’s winning run in the bottom of the 14th.

12 Erik Boland, “Yankees’ Season on the Brink,” New York Newsday, October 16, 2022: A78. González made his major league debut on May 26, 2022, with a 2-for-4 performance against the Detroit Tigers. In 382 plate appearances he hit 11 home runs (.296 batting average), with a .789 OPS. He started the 2023 season with the Guardians but was sent to the minors in early May after hitting only one homer in 75 plate appearances (.196 batting average), with a .501 OPS. Recalled at the end of July, he finished the season with two homers in 180 plate appearances (.214 batting average), with a .551 OPS. He was waived by the Guardians on December 1, 2023. Claimed by the Yankees, he played in the minors in 2024 and was granted free agency in November. He returned to the majors in 2025, playing in 21 games for the San Diego Padres in April and May before being released.

13 Enyel De Los Santos relieved Hentges with two out in the seventh, recording the final out of that inning and pitching a perfect eighth. Eli Morgan set the Yankees down in order in the ninth and received credit for the win. 

14 Ryan Lewis, “SpongeBob is Cleveland’s Soundtrack,” Akron Beacon Journal, October 12, 2022: C1.

15 “Yankees’ Season on the Brink.” Sandy Alomar Jr. hit a home run vs. Mariano Rivera in the eighth inning of Game Four of the 1997ALDS to tie the score, Clevleand won the game in the ninth. Alomar’s home run can be viewed at “1997 ALDS Gm4: Alomar homers off Mo to tie it,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZgx2kxJ-lg (accessed March 28, 2026). Yankee reliever Joba Chamberlain, bothered by a swarm of midges that descended on Progressive Field in the eighth inning of Game Two of the 2007 ALDS, gave up a game-tying run on a walk and two wild pitches. Cleveland won the game in the 11th inning. In Game Two of the 2017 ALDS, the Yankees chose not to challenge a key hit by pitch call with two out in the sixth inning. Francisco Lindor followed with a grand slam and Cleveland won in extra innings. Lindor’s homer can be viewed at “Tom Hamilton call on Francisco Lindor Grand Slam ALDS 2017,” YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zbhgMLKAsU (accessed March 28, 2026).

16 “Yankees’ Season on the Brink.”

17 The Astros outhomered the Yankees 6-3 and outscored the Yankees 18-10 in the four-game sweep. Houston pitchers held Judge to one single and one walk in 17 plate appearances.