An Anatomy of the Inning That Doomed the Yankees’ Season

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The New York Yankees blew Game 1 of the 2024 World Series—their first Fall Classic game in 15 years—in large part due to manager Aaron Boone’s fateful choice of the wrong reliever in extra innings. Thus Freddie Freeman began his World Series MVP campaign with a walk-off grand slam.

Five days later, the Yankees blew another World Series game, and this one clinched the championship for the Los Angeles Dodgers in front of a stunned Yankee Stadium crowd. But New York didn’t lose Game 5 because of a tragic bullpen decision; rather, it imploded in spectacular, farcical fashion.

In fumbling 5-0 and 6-5 leads in a 7-6 Dodgers win, the Yankees committed two fielding errors, a catcher interference, and a balk due to an extra pickoff throw. They left 12 men on base. Their best pitcher, in arguably the most crucial play of the game, forgot to cover first base on what should have been a groundout.

As a thrilling MLB postseason concludes, it’s worth celebrating the Dodgers, who parlayed MLB’s best regular-season record into their second title this decade, and their first in a full season since 1988. (Gibby, meet Freddie, and so on.) But it’s also worth rubbernecking at the Yankees, who squandered two games they should have won, and therefore their first trip to the World Series since 2009.

Let’s pick up the action in the top of the fifth inning of Game 5. The Yankees lead 5-0 after home runs from Aaron Judge (finally breaking out of his horrible slump), Jazz Chisholm Jr. (ditto), and Giancarlo Stanton (continuing his mighty postseason). No team has ever come back from a five-run deficit in a World Series clincher. The Dodgers are already deep into their bullpen after starter Jack Flaherty recorded only four outs. Yankees ace Gerrit Cole hasn’t yet allowed a hit.

5-0, 0 outs, no runners on base; Yankees’ win probability: 94 percent

Cole is cruising, but Enrique Hernández greets him with a sharp single to right-center to lead off the fifth. The no-hitter is gone, but there’s no harm done yet, and the Yankees still have a better-than-nine-in-ten chance of sending the series back to Los Angeles for Game 6.

5-0, 0 outs, runner on first; Yankees’ win probability: 92 percent

Tommy Edman steps to the plate, hoping to continue his monthlong hot streak. The utility player who arrived in Los Angeles at the trade deadline, having missed the entire season until that point due to various injuries, was named NLCS MVP and finished the playoffs with a .328 batting average and .862 OPS.

This time up, though, Edman knocks a harmless-looking fly ball to center field. Just an inning earlier, Judge crashed into the wall to rob Freeman of an extra-base hit. This archetypal can of corn should be no problem for a defender of his caliber, or for any professional outfielder. But Judge takes his eye off the ball and lets it clank off his mitt. Hernández scrambles to second, and Cole faces his first jam of the night.

5-0, 0 outs, runners on first and second; Yankees’ win probability: 89 percent

Will Smith hits a routine grounder to the 6-hole. After ranging to his right, shortstop Anthony Volpe opts for the shortest throw—to force Hernández at third—rather than pivoting and throwing back across his body. It’s a smart idea.

But it’s unfortunately waylaid by poor execution, as Volpe spikes the throw into the dirt, and third baseman Chisholm can’t secure it. The ball squirts free, and everyone is safe.

It’s a surprise that Volpe is the culprit here. The young shortstop is an excellent defender, who won the Gold Glove as a rookie and is a finalist again this season. But his lapse at this crucial juncture is indicative of a broader problem with his team.

You wouldn’t know it from observing the Yankees in October, but this was actually a sound defensive team all year long. In the regular season, New York ranked second in fielding run value, per Statcast, and while much of their strength stemmed from their tandem of framing whizzes behind the plate—Austin Wells and Jose Trevino—the Yankees still tied for 10th in outs above average on balls hit in play.

But fielding problems plagued them throughout the postseason. They threw the ball away and struggled to stay in front of sharp grounders. A disastrous exchange between first baseman Anthony Rizzo and reliever Mark Leiter Jr. allowed the Guardians to tie an ALCS game in the eighth inning. And two key misplays in Game 1 of the World Series let Dodger runners reach third base, which allowed them to score on sacrifice flies; if not for those miscues, the Yankees wouldn’t have even been in a position to surrender Freeman’s grand slam in extras.

The 2024 Yankees had power and elite top-end talent, but they failed to grasp fundamentals like fielding and baserunning. And now those issues are rearing their ugly heads at the worst possible time.

5-0, 0 outs, bases loaded; Yankees’ win probability: 83 percent

Cole calms a nervous crowd with some cheese. On a 1-1 count, he blows a 98 mph fastball past no. 9 hitter Gavin Lux, then follows with a 99 mph heater to induce another whiff. The Dodgers’ dangerous top of the order is coming up, but at least the conga line isn’t progressing with every hitter.

5-0, 1 out, bases loaded; Yankees’ win probability: 88 percent

Possibly still suffering the effects of his shoulder subluxation from Game 2, Shohei Ohtani doesn’t capitalize on this possible moment of World Series heroism. Instead, the presumptive NL MVP flails at a knuckle curve below the zone as Cole keeps his shutout intact. “Got him!” shouts announcer Joe Davis. The home crowd bellows its approval. The Yankees’ win probability is almost back up to where it started the inning.

5-0, 2 outs, bases loaded; Yankees’ win probability: 93 percent

With the Dodgers in danger of stranding all three runners they’d placed on base with no outs, another MVP fails to muster hard contact against Cole. Mookie Betts rolls a slow, spinning grounder toward Rizzo, who squares in front of the ball as Cole maneuvers toward first, about to escape the stressful inning unscathed. This appears to be as routine a play as exists in an MLB infield.

But Rizzo takes an extra beat to corral the roller, even as Cole stops running to cover the bag and points at his teammate to take it himself. (Cole has “seen Rizzo take it himself from that spot on the field 100 times out of 100,” longtime infielder and former Yankee Matt Carpenter tweets.) Rizzo pulls his arm back to flip the ball to first, but the only player in the neighborhood is Betts, hustling down the line.

“Atrocious defense from the Yankees!” Davis laments. That’s been the case all inning, and the Rizzo-Cole mishap is the nadir. (Technically, this play is scored an infield single for Betts, but for all intents and purposes, it’s another error.) All of a sudden, the Dodgers have a run on the board and their hottest hitter up with a chance to tie the game.

5-1, 2 outs, bases loaded; Yankees’ win probability: 88 percent

Or he can halve the lead; that works, too. Freeman spoils a two-strike changeup with a foul ball, then lines a fastball up the middle to score two runs. Mere minutes ago, the Yankees were on the verge of a blowout win at home; now their lead hangs by a thread.

5-3, 2 outs, runners on the corners; Yankees’ win probability: 76 percent

And now that thread has snapped, and the lead is gone entirely. Cole hangs a two-strike cutter, and Teoscar Hernández doesn’t waste the gift. The ball rockets over Judge’s head; bounces off the warning track, 404 feet away from the plate; and pounds against the wall. Betts jogs home from third, windmilling his left arm, and Freeman follows in a sprint. All three runners who reached via a defensive disaster this inning have now scored.

5-5, 2 outs, runner on second; Yankees’ win probability: 52 percent

Somehow, the inning is still going—though it’s possible Yankee Stadium entered some sort of dimensional portal during this utterly bizarre stretch of climactic baseball. (Subsequent events in this game, including yet more Yankees foibles and another Dodgers comeback, only confirm this theory.)

Cole walks Max Muncy, then finally escapes the inning when Enrique Hernández, batting for the second time in the inning, grounds out. Cole ends up throwing 38 pitches in the frame, allowing five runs (all unearned), and generating what should have been six outs. The Dodgers, it’s worth noting, boasted the best batting line of any club in both the regular season and playoffs this year. Their offense was sufficiently high-octane with the normal allotment of outs, let alone twice as many in a key inning.

The game—and the season—isn’t over yet. The Yankees will actually score another run in the sixth inning before the Dodgers plate two with more small ball (single, infield single, walk, sac fly, catcher interference, sac fly) in the eighth. But the tides were turned, the true damage was done, and all other idiomatic expressions were satisfied during Game 5’s absurdist fifth inning, when glimmers of hope for a historic Yankees comeback from three games down dissipated with every error, and the Dodgers built up to a historic comeback of their own.

New York’s win probability in Game 5 peaked at 96 percent, meaning the Dodgers, at that point, had a 1-in-25 chance of winning the World Series on Wednesday night. The Dodgers seized that chance—or, rather, the Yankees gave them that chance, with physical mistakes and mental lapses and a catastrophic teamwide collapse. The Dodgers are worthy champions of the 2024 MLB season. But it’s the Yankees’ inning of horrors that might be remembered forever.