The playoffs tend to provide certain reminders about how postseason baseball works. The Yankees, in completing their 4-1 series win over the Cleveland Guardians to advance to the World Series, provided one about the importance of power. Hit 10 home runs in five games, as the Yankees did in this series, and you can overcome all manner of base-running errors, scuffed defensive work, and late-inning meltdowns. Just keep hitting the ball over the fence, and good things will happen for you.
Here's another reminder: There is probably no hitter in baseball more terrifying to pitch to in a high-leverage situation than Juan Soto. The Yankees right fielder came to the plate in the top of the 10th inning, with the score tied 2-2, two men on base, and two outs. Soto was looking for a fastball from Hunter Gaddis, and he wasn't going to let the at-bat end until he got one. What must it feel like to pitch to a locked-in Juan Soto, who possesses not only all the confidence and power that makes for a great clutch hitter, but one of the games most discerning eyes. I imagine it feels like being asked to chop down a redwood with a hatchet.
Soto took Gaddis's first pitch, a slider low and inside for a ball. He performed his patented take-slide, stared Gaddis down, and prepared for the next pitch. Another slider arrived, this time at the bottom edge of the zone, and Soto reacted to the called strike with a frustrated squat. The next two pitches, both sliders, were fouled off, and Soto reacted to each by once again staring at Gaddis and nodding at him. At this point it was clear that Soto was toying with Gaddis, and when he continued to stare and nod at Gaddis after fouling off the next two pitches—both offspeed—it felt like he had grown by six inches while Gaddis had shrunk by five. Finally, Gaddis relented, offering Soto a 95-mph fastball at the very top of the zone, which Soto turned into the game-winning three-run homer.
It was one of the greatest at-bats I've ever seen, not just for the result, but for how inevitable that result's arrival felt. Nobody was more aware of that inevitability than Soto, who carried himself through the at-bat like someone who had been to the future and already knew what was going to happen. "I mean, I was all over him. I was all over him. That was the only thing that I was thinking," is how Soto described the at-bat while celebrating on the field. "I was just saying to myself, 'You all over that guy. You all over that guy. He ain't got anything.' And I just tried to make good contact, and I did."
Soto wouldn't have been in position to author that legacy-defining at-bat if not for Giancarlo Stanton, who has spent this postseason providing his own set of reminders. It was Stanton's two-run shot in the sixth inning that got New York back into the game and further solidified the notion that Stanton is one of the best postseason players the Yankees have ever had. In 36 career postseason games with the Yankees, Stanton now has 16 homers, 35 RBI, and a 1.019 OPS. In this year's ALCS, we saw him refined down to the purest expression of who he is as a player—he produced four hits in 21 plate appearances, and all four were home runs.
That Stanton can simultaneously stand out as a legendary playoff performer on a team that has had no shortage of those and the most expensive flop in franchise history tells a neat story about the difference between the regular season and the playoffs. Greatness during the regular season is established through consistent application over the course of a 162-game season. The playoffs are a different beast—one mini-slump or hot streak that would get lost in the wash of 162 games' worth of statistics can decide who stays and who goes home. These are boom-or-bust times, and they occasionally call for boom-or-bust players.
What the Yankees have in Soto and Stanton are two perfect versions of two types of players who so often decide a playoff series. Great teams need players like Soto, who never fade and can control whole games and series from the batter's box, but they also need players like Stanton, who know the value of swinging the bat as hard as possible and letting fate decide the rest.
