MLB Playoffs: Yankees move to ALCS after Gerrit Cole and Aaron Judge come through in ALDS Game 4 in Kansas City

One year and 10 days ago, the Yankees played their final game of the 2023 regular season.

They lost 5-2 in Kansas City to a 106-loss Royals team. Starter Michael King, now with the Padres, was penalized for eight hits and four runs in four innings. A young outfielder named Everson Pereira, who spent the entire 2024 season at Triple-A Scranton, hit a rebounding curveball for the final out. The Yankees and their $273 million payroll finished the season 82-80.

New York was statistically eliminated a week earlier — they were emotionally eliminated long before that — but the final day of the regular season still meant something. It was particularly painful for the club's captain, Aaron Judge, who re-signed with the Yankees last winter for nine years and $360 million. In his first year as captain, the Yankees posted their worst regular season since 1992.

And so the gigantic outfielder, who was having another outstanding, if injury-plagued, season, stayed in the Kauffman Stadium dugout for a while while the rest of the Yankees checked in in the locker room. It's an image most often seen at the end of a playoff series: the oppressed losers hanging over the railing, watching the winners celebrate in a masochistic ritual of supposed growth. But that afternoon in Kansas City, Judge looked only at his own team's failures. After a few moments, he stood up, rolled a baseball to a fan in the front row, and trotted toward the clubhouse.

This memory stayed with the captain. He hasn't forgotten that disappointing day.

“(In) 2023, our season ended here,” Judge told TNT sideline reporter Jon Morosi after watching the finale of New York’s decisive 3-1 win in ALDS Game 4 on Thursday. “We didn’t make it to the postseason. I remember a lot of these guys looking at the field.

“We came together and said this won’t happen again.”

Judge went one-for-two with two walks on Thursday. His 115 mph double in the sixth inning, which scored the team's third run, was the second-hardest hit ball of his postseason career and his hardest since 2018. New York scored its first two runs on RBI singles from Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton, who further cemented his reputation as a playoff player.

Judge, on the other hand, started the night in October with a paltry 1-for-11 record, which earned him a mountain of unfounded criticism. But on Thursday he took a small step toward addressing early concerns about his postseason credibility.

So did the Yankees.

New York came to Game 3 in Kansas City with the specter of concern. Fans worried, prognosticators egged on, and understandably so. The Yankees did not play well in any of their home games in this series. They eked out a win in Game 1 despite the superiority of their bullpen, but didn't look convincing in the process. The Royals silenced the Yankees' bats with a win in Game 2. A series that on paper should have been something of a mismatch had become a coin toss. The team with the best record in the American League was sidelined in September by a club that had the league's worst offense.

Now, thanks to two outstanding pitching performances in Games 3 and 4, the Yankees have put those doubts to rest — for now. The bullpen in particular was a godsend. Through the first 15 2/3 innings of this postseason, New York relievers have not allowed an earned run. Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver each pitched a scoreless frame on Thursday.

Their performances underlined the strong catch-up start of top player Gerrit Cole. The ever-emotional hurler was a little blown away in New York's Game 1 win, allowing three earned runs and seven hits in five innings of work. Many pitchers would have been happy, even thrilled, to finish a playoff start with that line. But not Cole, who shook his head in self-loathing as he walked back to the clubhouse after being pulled.

He was much sharper in Game 4, allowing just one run in seven innings. A notable change in approach certainly helped, something Cole alluded to during his post-Game 1 media conference.

“We look forward to making some adjustments next time,” he said.

He adjusted it. In Game 1, Cole threw 11 sliders to the Royals' batters. None became outs. Four turned into hits, including Yuli Gurriel's wall-banging double that knocked Cole out of the game. The slider kept pulling back on Cole and caught way too much plate and way too many barrels.

So he and the Yankees were hesitant in Game 4 and completely eliminated from the field. On Thursday, Cole didn't throw a single slider. Instead, he relied heavily on his four-seam fastball, throwing it 55% of the time. Cole hadn't thrown the heater this often in a start since September 2023, a sign of both intent and adaptability from the Yankees ace.

“(The fastball) hit good pitches all night,” he told YES Network during the club’s postgame clubhouse celebration. “The run support allowed us to stay on offense.”

Cole's final pitch, a 97.7 mph fastball to the relatively anemic Kyle Isbel, provided the hairiest moment of the night. The previous batter, veteran outfielder Tommy Pham, had hit a single against Cole, his third of the night. Isbel had the chance to equalize. And for a moment it seemed as if he had done just that.

The ball shot off Isbel's bat toward right field. At Yankee Stadium, Isbel's smash would have been a home run. But at Kauffman Stadium, home of the league's largest outfield, it safely fell into Juan Soto's hands. The threat – and with it the game – was over.

Two innings later, after Holmes and Weaver quietly sent the Royals on vacation, Judge caught the final out on a fly ball to center. As he did, he clenched his fist and jogged to the infield to celebrate.

All in all, it was a good night for Judge and the Yankees, which they appropriately enjoyed with champagne geysers in the City of Fountains.

The ALCS, New York's 19th in franchise history, awaits.