Yankees lament World Series mistakes against Dodgers

NEW YORK — Ultimately, the story of the final night of the New York Yankees' 2024 season — and really a subplot of their entire year — was seemingly the number of free outs and free bases they gave away, in all phases of the game.

That's what derailed everything in a nightmarish fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night.

And the execution sealed her fate in the eighth.

“For everything to collapse like that, it's just… I'm going to think about it for a long time, I can tell you that,” Kahnle said. “It just sucks that maybe I could have done something different. This is.” What will be on my mind for a long time? I just feel like we definitely could have done more.

This was not the chaos of the grueling fifth inning, when two errors and a missed out at first base gave the Dodgers' lineup a whopping three additional outs and turned the seeming formality of another cross-country flight to the West Coast into a final heavyweight showdown.

But there were free bases again. A walk to No. 8 hitter Will Smith to load the bases, a freak catcher's interference – the first in a Fall Classic since Game 3 of the 1982 World Series – that gave a seemingly compromised Shohei Ohtani a free run to first Base forward gave the Dodgers two other All-World MVPs.

With two sacrifice hits in the inning, the advantage once again turned into a disadvantage, and Los Angeles gave New York one final, decisive answer.

“You're trying to keep the ball out of the air, but you're facing three of the best batsmen in the world,” Weaver said. “You’re trying to make sure you limit the damage. Sometimes you too If you're not on the right side, you just tip your hat to a few hitters who have done well in baseball.

That's really it: The Dodgers executed when it counted, and the Yankees didn't.

With New York taking a 6-5 lead in the eighth, Kiké Hernández led off with a single off Kahnle, Tommy Edman followed with a grounder to deep short that was deflected by Anthony Volpe on a dive, but still good for was an infield single, and Smith grabbed the ball on a four-pitch walk to load the bases without anyone getting out.

“The first few pitches I really felt like I was clicking pretty well and then it just kind of snowballed on me,” Kahnle said. “I lost control and the next thing I know the inning is lost by us.”

Gavin Lux battled Weaver for six pitches and ended up throwing a two-strike fastball deep to left-center to tie the game. Two pitches later, Mookie Betts got a slight swing on a first-pitch fastball to put the Dodgers on top for good.

“Don’t hit,” Betts said of his approach at the plate. “Put one in right there; you never know what will happen. I had a little chat with Freddie [Freeman] shortly before because I didn't know what to do. Freddie just said, 'Trust your gut,' so I went and just put it into play.”

The Dodgers also obviously benefited from this catcher's interference on the only pitch between those two sacrifice flies.

Ohtani had gone 0-for-4 in that final plate appearance and 2-for-19 in the World Series, with his upper hand (the extension of his left shoulder, which had suffered a subluxation in Game 2) coming off the bat, noticeably twitching on many of his follow-up actions together.

But on the first pitch of that contest against Weaver, it was discovered that the head of his bat had touched the mitt of Yankees catcher Austin Wells – as a brief replay of the game confirmed, much to the dismay and confusion of the 49,263 spectators at Yankee Stadium.

The possibility of interference from the first Fall Classic catcher in 42 years clearly hadn't even occurred to Weaver — and had the plate's appearance resulted in a second out in the inning, a sacrifice fly from Betts wouldn't have been good enough.

“He obviously has a long swing, and with the way he ran, it was kind of a perfect storm,” Weaver said. “Wells is trying to stay through the ball and Shohei is just trying to cover him and do a job up there. Sometimes it’s just a bit awkward and weird.”

Add that to the what-if scenarios that will be running through the Yankees' minds as they digest this during a long offseason.

Ohtani's first-time trip may have been an unusual coincidence, but it was also fitting on a night when the Yankees couldn't get out of that brutal fifth inning and, of all things, added a mound disengagement violation to mention throwing, fielding and mental Errors at critical points in the game.

All of those things, spread over a total of two innings, cost them a chance to force a Game 6 — and a chance to continue their quest for a title.

“It’s going to hurt for a while,” Kahnle said. “We'll look back on it and see that those are the plays we can clean up and then we'll move on. That’s part of the game.” . It hurts to see it all the time and it just sucks.