What you need to know from the MLB playoffs: Yankees await Tigers or Guardians

A squeeze play sent one American League Division Series to Game 5, as Cleveland’s David Fry hit a pinch hit homer and then bunted home the winning run in the Guardians’ come-from-behind road win over the Detroit Tigers. Meanwhile, benches cleared in an otherwise quiet evening in Kansas City, Mo., where the New York Yankees defeated the Royals to advance to the ALCS. Let’s go around the horn.

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The Yankees jumped ahead two batters into the game, then tacked on single runs in the fifth and sixth. That’s when the brouhaha began. The Royals’ Maikel Garcia took offense to Anthony Volpe’s tag(s) on a double-play turn, and after some barking and staring the benches and bullpens emptied. There were no punches thrown. Just yapping. Even that didn’t wake up the Royals lineup. The Yankees polished off a 3-1 win and now await the winner of the Guardians-Tigers Game 5.

Stock up: Gerrit Cole

Cole was crisp and economical in his second start of this series. After pushing across four runs, three earned, against Cole in Game 1, the Royals had no answer for Cole in Game 4. (Except Tommy Pham. He had all the answers.) Cole tossed seven innings of one-run baseball on just 87 pitches. He scattered six hits while walking none and striking out four. Since the start of August, Cole has permitted only 19 earned runs over 12 starts — and seven of those runs came in one start, a mid-September blowup against the Boston Red Sox. Despite losing two and a half months this season to an elbow injury, Cole is back in ace form in October.

Stock down: The Royals’ bats

There existed reason for concern. The Royals were the worst offense in baseball in September; Bobby Witt Jr. had an .815 OPS, everybody else was in the .600s or below. Needing to crack Cole in an elimination game, Pham led the charge with three hits but got no help until Witt and Vinnie Pasquantino teamed up to provide the Royals’ only run in the sixth inning. All of this might have felt different had Kyle Isbel’s bid to tie the game in the seventh not been caught on the warning track. But it was. And that was all she wrote for the Royals.

Required reading

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It was a back-and-forth Game 4, with multiple lead changes, but the Guardians topped the Tigers 5-4 after pulling away once and for all in the seventh, thanks to Fry’s pinch hit two-run home run. Fry is the one who hammered the 98 mph heater over the wall, but Guardians manager Stephen Vogt deserves credit for pulling all the right strings in the elimination game, including waiting until the seventh to pinch hit Fry, turning to closer Emmanuel Clase for the final five outs, and correctly putting on the squeeze play in the ninth. Now, the Guardians host the win-or-go-home Game 5, while the Tigers counter with Tarik Skubal.

Stock up: David Fry

Game 4 may be remembered as the “David Fry Game.” After a forgettable Game 3, in which Fry failed to come through in three at-bats with runners in scoring position, he wasted no time making an impact on Thursday. Pinch hitting in the seventh, with Steven Kwan standing on second, Fry clobbered a fastball from Tigers reliever Beau Brieske for a two-run home run. It was Cleveland’s first pinch hit go-ahead home run in postseason history. Later, Fry executed a sacrifice bunt that allowed the Guardians to score a crucial insurance run in the ninth. After an All-Star first half, Fry was slowed by an elbow injury in the second half. But now he’s authored a signature postseason moment.

Stock down: Pitching chaos

Pitching chaos giveth, and pitching chaos taketh away. That is the life the Tigers have chosen, for better or worse. On Thursday, it was for worse. Starter Reese Olson was solid, giving up one run over four innings. But every reliever who came in after him allowed an earned run until Will Vest, who recorded the last two outs. Brieske picked the wrong time to give up his first run of the postseason. Then, manager A.J. Hinch tried to squeeze two innings out of Jackson Jobe, but the rookie got into trouble in the ninth, leading to Cleveland scoring its eventual winning run.

Required reading

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On deck for Friday

Padres at Dodgers. 8:08 pm ET, FOX, Fubo

Series tied 2-2
SDP Yu Darvish (7-3, 3.31 ERA) vs. LAD (TBD)
Stream the MLB playoffs on Fubo (try for free).

Player to watch: Fernando Tatis Jr.

Tatis has been a focal point of the Padres’ performance this postseason, so it seems likely that in a do-or-die game, in a series as dramatic as this one, Tatis will be a major factor. To this point, Tatis has hit .500 this postseason. Against the Dodgers, he is 7-for-16 with three home runs. Xander Bogaerts recently compared Tatis to David Ortiz, and we all know Big Papi had a knack for rising to the occasion.

Player to watch: Max Muncy

Muncy’s importance is cranked up with Freddie Freeman hobbled. He started at first base in Game 4 and scored twice, and don’t let his otherwise ho-hum hitting in this series obscure the fact Muncy has hit really, really well in recent months. After returning from the injured list in August, he hit .245/.405/.520 with as many walks and hit by pitches (27) as strikeouts (27). Muncy has historically struggled against Yu Darvish but was 1-for-3 against him in Game 2.

(Photo of the Yankees after clinching:  Jamie Squire / Getty Images)