MLB playoffs 2022 – Yankees’ Game 3 ALCS loss a new low

NEW YORK — The empty blue seats started to grow in numbers during the sixth inning, by which time it had become abundantly clear that the first two games of the American League Championship Series were no accident or anomaly. The Houston Astros are a better baseball team than the New York Yankees — better at pitching and hitting, better at things big and little, better to the point that those who had arrived at Yankee Stadium for Game 3 looking for a sliver of hope were leaving mid-inning convinced it would not arrive.

They were right. The Astros overwhelmed the Yankees in a 5-0 victory on Saturday night to take a 3-0 series lead, and it’s only a matter of time before Houston razes the remainder of New York’s 2022 season. The game itself served as a microcosm of the American League. The Astros own the league — and no team owns the American League without owning the Yankees too.

However superior the Astros might have looked entering this series, they’ve picked apart the Yankees with such thoroughness, such clinical precision, that those at the stadium no longer knew who exactly to blame. They booed everyone, including Aaron Judge, who this season hit 62 home runs and is going to win AL Most Valuable Player but hasn’t performed near that level this postseason. In the 400 level, they chanted “Fire Cashman,” targeting general manager Brian Cashman, who in the past four full seasons has constructed teams that won 100, 103, 92 and 99 games. These frustrations reinforce the reality that the blessing of 27 championships is likewise a curse that renders itself every year the Yankees don’t win another.

And unless New York does what only one team ever has and comes back from a 3-0 championship series deficit, the Yankees’ drought will reach 13 seasons, the second longest in their history, and they’ll lose their fifth…