Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and their teammates hardly had time to party at Yankee Stadium. They had a game to play in Houston, and soon.
Judge and Stanton hit home runs as the New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Guardians 5-1 Tuesday in the deciding Game 5 of the AL Division Series.
The last out, which Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres punctuated by cradling the ball to mimic the “rock the baby” motion Cleveland’s Josh Naylor used after homering a night earlier off Gerrit Cole, came shortly before 7:30 p.m. in New York.
That meant the Yankees had less than 24 hours before playing Game 1 of the AL Championship Series against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park on Wednesday night.
“The challenge is we’re facing a great team,” New York manager Aaron Boone said. “As far as the quick turnaround, we’ll be fine. That’s baseball. We do that all the time. We’ll walk in there with some confidence. We know they are great team and rested and ready.”
The matchup will feature the top two teams in the AL in the 106-win Astros and the 99-win Yankees — they seemed to be on a collision course for this ALCS rematch all season. Houston won the regular-season series 5-2.
Houston beat the Yankees in the 2019 ALCS when Jose Altuve hit a bottom-of-the-ninth home run off Aroldis Chapman in Game 6.
