Yankees even ALDS at two games apiece with Game 4 win over Indians

In Game 1 of this series, Yankees’ starter Luis Severino was chased from the game early while Cleveland took a chance starting Trevor Bauer and he went almost seven innings, carrying a no-hit bid most of that way.

In Game 4 on Monday, Yankees’ starter Luis Severino went seven innings and striking out nine, with only one walk, four hits, and three runs. Meanwhile, Trevor Bauer exited early with only 1 ²⁄₃ innings against New York, letting up four runs off of four hits and striking out three batters.

The completely unexpected results of starting pitchers is part of the fun of baseball, especially in this toss-up of a postseason where few starters have gone more than a handful of innings, much less done it twice.

Bauer specifically had a rough beginning of the second inning, letting Todd Frazier drive in Starlin Castro with a double, giving up a single to Aaron Hicks that brought Frazier home, and allowing Aaron Judge’s first hit of the entire series which would bring in two more runs to make it 4-0 early.

Joe Smith handled the last out of the inning but made way for Mike Clevinger for the third inning, who didn’t acquit himself much better than Bauer did. He let up another run to make it 5-2 after loading the bases and was switched out for Danny Salazar.

The Indians scored their third and final run, to give them a bit more hope, in the top of the fifth off of a Roberto Perez solo home run. That was it, though.

They put three pitchers on the mound in the bottom of the fifth inning alone, and the extra manpower and fresh arms didn’t help as the Yankees scored a sixth run thanks to a Brett Gardner sacrifice fly.

Gary Sanchez returned the solo home run favor, though, blasting one to right field in the bottom of the sixth inning to extend the lead to four runs once again.

The Indians had their best chance in the eighth inning when Dellin Betances came into the game and couldn’t get a ball anywhere near the strike zone, walking Yan Gomes and Francisco Lindor with a wild array of pitches before getting pulled for Tommy Kahnle.

They couldn’t do anything with it though, and left the inning — and the rest of the innings — scoreless.

New York and Cleveland will face off one last time on Wednesday to try to get to the ALCS. Corey Kluber will be on the mound for Cleveland, and he’ll have to have a better showing than he did in Game 2 (and Bauer did tonight) to give the Indians a chance to advance.