Yankees Show Little Punch, Face Dodgers Brooms in Game 4

 DODGERS 4 - YANKEE 2 

The New York Yankees have their backs up against the proverbial wall now following a 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. 

Ever since Freddie Freeman launched a grand slam into the right field bleachers at Dodgers Stadium on Friday night, the Yankees have looked totally lost as a baseball club. They can't hit; struggle in the field, and their pitching isn't up to snuff. 

Giancarlo Stanton out at the plate. Getty Images. 

By the seventh inning of Game 3 on Monday night, you could hear a pin drop at Yankee Stadium. By the eighth inning, fans were starting to hit the exits. The Yankees had nothing, and everyone knows it. 

While the Yankees had a good season this year, and got to the Fall Classic for the first time in 15 years, they aren't even close to being as good as Yankees teams of the past who have made it this far into October. 

Let's be honest the Yankees got here thanks to a soft American League slate in the postseason.  As Michael Kay pointed out on the YES Postgame, the Yankees won with their B-game against Kansas City and Cleveland. That won't work now.

Yankee Stadium was ready to explode on Monday. Derek Jeter threw out the first pitch, and fans were ready to go wild in the Bronx for the first time in a very long time. 

Then that guy, Freddie Freeman came up again, and cracked a two-run bomb off the facade of the second deck in right to give LA a 2-0 lead in the first inning. The air came out of the Yankees balloon. The fans knew it. The players played like it. 

There were also the little things like Giancarlo Stanton getting thrown out at home plate in the fourth inning on a base hit by Anthony Volpe that kept the Yankees off the board. 

Or Aaron Judge getting a little too much underneath a pitch, and sending it to shallow left when everyone, including John Sterling thought it was a homer off the end of the bat. 

Judge went 0-for-3; he's hitting .091 this postseason. Just not good enough. 

As for LA, their starting pitcher for Game 3, Walker Buehler dialed it back to 2021 when he was a Cy Young candidate, blanking the Bombers over five solid innings. The Dodgers pen did the rest. 

Sure Alex Verdugo hit a two-run homer for the Yankees in the ninth, but all that did was cancel the shutout. The Yankees never really had a chance, and never really had much fight. 

Now the Bombers face the prospects of getting swept in the Fall Classic. The Yankees haven't been swept in the World Series since the Cincinnati Reds did it to them in 1976. Do the Yankees have enough fight in them to at least stave off elimination for one night, and get the ball to Gerrit Cole in Game 5? We'll find out soon.