NEW YORK — For most of Tuesday, it felt like this was the final day of the 2024 MLB season. The Dodgers had a 3-0 lead against the Yankees in the World Series, and there’s always a feeling of inevitability that comes with that. Most of the time when a team takes a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series, they win Game 4 and close it out. In the long history of the World Series, teams who lost the first three games were just 3-21 in Game 4.
When Freddie Freeman hit another two-run, first-inning home run, the feeling of inevitability grew even stronger. This thing was over.
Instead, the Yankees became the first team in 54 years down 3-0 in the World Series to win Game 4. The Anthony Volpe grand slam turned things around, though the Dodgers kept fighting and fighting and made this a nail-biting game for a while. The final score is a bit misleading because the Yankees only had a 6-4 lead going to the bottom of the eighth before exploding to win 11-4. The Dodgers had the tying run on base in the fifth and brought the tying run to the plate in the seventh. But once the Yankees were able to hand the ball to Luke Weaver and the offense went nuts in the eighth, it was over.
And now, dare I say, we once again have the chance to see a great World Series. Game 1 was one for the ages and it’ll go down as one of the best World Series games of all-time, regardless of the result in the series. But if a sweep came with it, we’d have to declare the series as a whole a letdown. Maybe even a dud, given the hype that surrounded the Fall Classic before the two powerhouse franchises met. Game 4 provided the opportunity to hope a classic is still on the table.
Remember (sorry for bringing this up, Yankees fans, but it’s been 20 years and you should be over it), the only time a team came from a 3-0 series deficit was here at Yankee Stadium and was completed by the hated Boston Red Sox. Exactly 20 years ago! Is now the time the Yankees can exorcise those demons?
Probably not, of course. The Dodgers still look like the better team and just lost a bullpen game. It sure doesn’t seem like these Yankees can beat these Dodgers four straight games.
That said, the Yankees really can still salvage this. And if they make it interesting, it’ll give the Yankees fan out there hope and seeing two fan bases biting their figurative nails for upwards of seven games is the stuff of classic World Series.
Anthony Rizzo before Game 4 mentioned the Yankees did not feel the season was over. They now have Gerrit Cole waiting in Game 5 and an angry Carlos Rodón in Game 6. Rizzo’s comments reflected the general vibe the Yankees had on the field during batting practice. They were business-like, of course, but there was an air of “no pressure.” They seemed more loose than in Game 3. The pressure is removed when everyone in the world thinks you’re going to lose.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone shared similar sentiment after the game.
“I had that sense all day with these guys, let’s just go get it, you know?” he said. “You kinda got that sense before the game and as the game unfolded, it felt better.”
Same with catcher Austin Wells.
“We’re down 3-0. Let’s just go have fun and see what happens,” he said of their laid-back mindset. “This was the last guaranteed day of baseball for the year and we didn’t want to take it for granted.”
And to Rizzo’s point, the Yankees are actually set up to send this thing back to Los Angeles.
Cole was great in Game 1, allowing just one run in six innings. He had the Yankees in position to win the game. When he’s at the top of his game, he’s the only True Ace in this series (though Yoshinobu Yamamoto might join him as soon as next year). You can ride those in October. He very well could get through seven innings. If you’re the Yankees, you enter Game 5 confident Cole is putting you in the best possible position to win.
“Yeah, to have an ace on the mound for another must-win game,” Wells said when asked about feeling good for Game 5. “We have a lot of confidence in him to go out there and give us a good quality start and give us a chance to win the game.”
Rodón might be a different story. He’s been bad on the road all year and was shelled in Game 2. Still, if the Yankees send this series back to L.A., given how good Games 1 and 4 were, we’d have witnessed a very good World Series.
Not only that, but the narrative shifts if this heads back out west. If you’re in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, you’ve lost two straight games and have an off day to worry about becoming that team that blew a 3-0 World Series lead. All the momentum — if there is such a thing — resides on the Yankees’ side. The Yankees remain loose and feeling like they have no pressure and are trying to shock the world.
On the offensive side, the Yankees showed signs of life in Game 4, too. They hadn’t been getting production from many spots in the lineup, but look at the 7-8-9 hitters with the season on the line. Anthony Volpe had the game-changing — and series-altering? — grand slam and later doubled. His swings looked great all night.
“I felt like the fans were so ready to erupt last night,” said Boone. “You finally got to see the top blow off Yankee Stadium in a World Series game.”
Boone also praised Volpe’s baserunning that provided their seventh run, when Alex Verdugo grounded to second with the Dodgers’ infield drawn in. Volpe got an amazing jump from third base and scored despite a nice defensive play.
“Those are little things that happened that turn into big things,” the manager said.
Sure enough, Gleyber Torres hit a three-run homer on the next at-bat.
Back to the bottom of the lineup, though. It was a dream game for Volpe, who grew up a die-hard Yankees fan.
“Probably every night,” Volpe said when asked how often he imagined moments like this growing up. “It is pretty crazy to think about, it is my dream.
“We’ve been through so much this year, we’re not gonna go down easy.”
Wells, who has been in such a major funk, doubled and homered. Again, the swings in general looked very comfortable. The double was only a few feet from being a home run and the homer was upper tank.
“I thought Austin had some really good at-bats, which was good to see,” said Boone.
Verdugo hit a home run in his final at-bat of Game 3 and added a hard single in this one in addition to putting the ball in play when Volpe came home from third.
The Yankees could sure use prime-form Aaron Judge — he did come through with an RBI single in the eighth, so maybe that’s something? — but getting production from the bottom of the lineup helped quell that concern for a game. And Judge is the type of player who can bust out of a slump at any moment. That single could really be a springboard to success. Gleyber Torres getting on the board with a three-run homer was nice to see from the Yankees’ point of view, too.
Overall, it’s fair to say the bats are alive now. Perhaps they’ll feel more comfortable against Flaherty a second time. It was the third time through the order in Game 1 that Juan Soto reached base before a Giancarlo Stanton home run, after all.
This all sounds a little too rosy to the Dodgers fans and Yankees haters out there and that’s because, well, they are still in a gigantic hole, trailing the World Series 3-1. They’ve looked lifeless for a lot of it. Miracles have to start somewhere, though, and Game 4 helped provide a road map for how this series can deliver on its once-immense promise.
