MLB Division Series final: Cleveland Guardians vs New York Yankees game 5 summary

The Yankees came into the division series as heavy favorites and they have delivered on that promise, but boy oh boy, did they leave it late. In the end, they did it in the way that they have made it through the entire season, by riding two big home runs.

In the first inning, Giancarlo Stanton cleared the bases with a three-run homer, and Aaron Judge followed it up in the second to put the Yankees into a lead that the Guardians simply couldn’t come back from.

When Josh Naylor flied out in his first at bat, the stadium rang out to chants of “Who’s your daddy?” as the New York faithful gave him an earful for his Game 4 “rocking the baby” celebration gesture.

The Yankees tacked on another for insurance in the fifth, and the Guardians could only claw one back in the 5-1 loss that sees them head home for the final time this season.

Cleveland put up surprisingly stiff resistance in this ALDS, and the Yankees needed all five games to get past them. Now they will have to face an entirely different prospect in the Houston Astros as a reward for their trouble.

The Astros are in their sixth straight ALCS and are coming into it well rested, although that has not been the best of omens so far this year.

Astros ace Justin Verlander will start on the mound for Houston, and while the Yankees would have wanted to counter with their own ace in Gerrit Cole, he was needed in the Cleveland slug-fest twice, making Jameson Taillon the likely starter for the pinstripes.

The last two times that the Yankees made it this far in the playoffs, they were eliminated by the Astros. They will be hoping that the bats of Judge and Stanton are just heating up as they look to reverse that trend.

The Yankees are in, fans will be pleased to know, but they got there by taking the scenic route, and made it by the hair of their chinny chin chin.