'They just got lucky': Yanks' confidence unshaken after KC knots up ALDS

NEW YORK -- It turned out that Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s biggest swing of the night would not be the one that produced a ninth-inning homer, providing an all-too-brief tease that the Yankees’ slumbering offense was about to erupt in this American League Division Series.

No, as much as Chisholm savored his trot around the basepaths, the talking point may have come a few minutes later in the aftermath of the Yankees’ 4-2 Game 2 loss Monday night to the Royals. With the series switching venues to Kansas City, the outspoken infielder-outfielder all but guaranteed that his team would be the one advancing.

“It still feels the same, that we're going to win it,” Chisholm said. “I don't feel like anybody feels any different. We're going to go out there and do our thing still; we still don't feel like any team is better than us. We had a lot of missed opportunities tonight, so they just got lucky.”

The Royals will surely affix that quote to a bulletin board at Kauffman Stadium, and the Yankees must back up Chisholm’s boast. As he noted, their offense went quiet in numerous run-scoring opportunities; Chisholm’s homer off Lucas Erceg made him the first Yankee to touch second base since the third inning.

“They’ve made their pitches when they need to,” Aaron Judge said. “We got a couple of guys on in scoring position, and then they buckled down and made some tough pitches on us. We’ve got to come through in those situations and break it open.”

Overall, New York went 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position during the Game 2 loss, leaving eight men on base. Including Saturday’s Game 1 victory, which the Yanks squeaked out by a 6-5 score, the Bombers are 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position through two ALDS contests, leaving 19 men on base.

“That’s playoff baseball,” said manager Aaron Boone. “The heat is turned up, and you’ve got to be able to slow things down.”

Coming off a season in which Judge belted 58 homers and drove in a career-high 144 runs, seemingly in line for his second AL MVP in three years, the Yankees are waiting for their captain to produce his Reggie Jackson moment.

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Judge legged out an infield single in the eighth for his first hit of the ALDS, finishing 1-for-3 with a walk. It’s a start, but he has more to do: dating to 2020, Judge is 9-for-63 (.143) with three homers and 24 strikeouts in his last 16 postseason games.

“You can never count him out,” Juan Soto said. “He’s the greatest hitter of all-time right now. He’s just doing his thing. He struggled a little bit with the fastball today, but I know he’s going to bounce back.”

As in Game 1, the Yankees had a two-on, none-out opportunity in the first inning but were unable to capitalize. This time, Cole Ragans issued walks to the first two batters, perhaps unnerved by a sellout crowd that produced ear-splitting decibel levels when Carlos Rodón struck out the side in the top half of the frame.

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Judge struck out, Austin Wells looked at a third strike, and Giancarlo Stanton’s bat splintered on a groundout. The crowd’s roar dulled to a murmur, which is where it would remain for most of the rest of the game, especially after Rodón was hit hard in a four-run fourth inning.

“We play nine innings. You’ve got a long ballgame,” Judge said. “We’d like to get it there in the first and give your team the lead, but we haven’t been able to come through. We’ll do it next time.”

Within the defeat, there were small victories to be found; the bullpen was excellent behind Rodón, hurling 5 1/3 scoreless frames, and Soto noted that he gathered valuable data by facing a trio of lefties in Ragans, Angel Zerpa and Kris Bubic.

“I saw what they have and what they tried to do against me, so I can take that to the next game,” Soto said.

At this stage, though, few guaranteed games remain. Too many recent Yankee Octobers have been cut short by relative offensive silence after a regular season filled with gaudy stats.

The Yanks do believe, as Chisholm noted, that they have a clear path to their first AL pennant since 2009 -- but Game 2 provided a sobering reminder that they can’t get there if their stars don’t hit.

“One day we get our butts kicked and the next day we’re kicking butt,” Chisholm said. “We turn around everything. We never look at anything as a downer. You come back and learn from it the next day.”