Seven years later, Yankees can use Guardians as steppingstone all over again

Somehow, it has been seven years. When we talk about this present arc of Yankee achievement, it’s best to go back to October 2017, because that’s when they began to rise once more as perennial contenders. It’s best to go back to another postseason encounter with the team they face now in the ALCS, the Cleveland Guardians (who were still known as Indians then).

The four years prior to 2017, the Yankees participated in only one postseason game, a one-and-done wild-card loss to the Astros. They’d missed the playoffs entirely in three of those four years. As much as the Yankees can ever be in a rebuilding phase, the Yankees were in a rebuilding phase. That 2017 season had dawned without much expectation.

“We started to learn to win as we went along,” a rookie outfielder named Aaron Judge said at the dawn of those playoffs. “That was fun.”

Pat Riley had once dubbed such seasons “the innocent climb.” Judge arrived and swatted 52 home runs, then a rookie record. Luis Severino blossomed, winning 14 games, pitching to a 2.98 ERA, striking out 230. The Yankees won 91 games, made the playoffs as a wild card, beat the Twins in the wild-card game, and it felt like they’d reached their ceiling, especially after falling behind 0-2 to Cleveland in the best-of-five Division Series.

Then, in the sixth inning of a scoreless Game 3, another rookie surely destined for greatness, Greg Bird, hit a home run off lefty killer Andrew Miller. They won that game 1-0. They won Game 4. Didi Gregorius hit two homers in Game 5 back in Cleveland. The Indians had won 102 games that year. Didn’t matter. In the joyous aftermath, a fresh Yankees era was officially born.

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“It’s a great mixture of youth and veteran players that are leading the way,” the Yankees manager, Joe Girardi, said, squinting through eyes burning from champagne that night at Progressive Field, on Oct. 11, 2017. “And it’s hard to believe, because we just beat a really, really good team.”

Two weeks later, the Yankees lost Game 7 of the American League championship series. They were so close to a World Series, and it was only natural to believe they’d get there sooner rather than later. But they kept running into the Astros, playing both on the level and otherwise. They’ve taken their shot year after year. Still haven’t made the next step.

They have a different manager now. Girardi was dismissed not long after that Game 7 disappointment, and in his valedictory farewell he’d said: “It is pretty special how quickly they came. I believe this club can even get better.”

They are better now than they were then, and different. Aaron Boone is in his seventh year trying to leap over the hump, push the Yankees to their first World Series in 15 years. Judge is still the centerpiece, no longer a kid on the come up but either the No. 1 or No. 2 everyday player in the sport, depending on which side of the aisle you sit in the Judge/Ohtani debate.

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Beyond that? The core is different — and better. The supporting pieces are different — and better. This time when the Yankees play the Guardians, they will have the home-field advantage. They will be the prohibitive favorite. Jose Ramirez is Cleveland’s Judge, the one player whose tenure extends far enough to remember October of 2017.

Ramirez’s costars were better in ’17. Judge’s are better now. This is October, so nothing can be definitive. But it sure seems that as we get ready for Game 1, it is better to be where the Yankees sit than where the Guardians sit. It sure seems that the seeds that were planted in one Cleveland series in 2017 can finally bear the sweetest kind of fruit in 2024.

“We certainly understand that we’re playing for a pennant now, for the right to go to the World Series,” said Boone. “So you’re aware of that. But you’re also like, ‘Man, it’s Game 1.’ That’s what we’re trying to get ready for.”

So dreaming of what possibly sits on the other side must wait. For now.

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“In a lot of ways, that’s a long ways off still,” Boone said. “And we’ve got a series to play out. So you understand what’s at stake, but it’s all about the game in front of us.”

The Guardians come in on a roll, surviving two straight elimination games, coming back in Game 5 against Detroit’s shoo-in Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. But they blew out their bullpen getting here. The Yankees also come in hot; they didn’t face any win-or-else games, but the two games they won in Kansas City they won with a perfect formula: terrific starting pitching, flawless relief and just enough clutch hitting.

And also: Judge is starting to hit the ball hard again.

“You can throw out whatever came before,” a Yankee manager once said on the eve of playing Cleveland, and that was Girardi, and that was 2017, and it turned out he was right. The Yankees would win that last of the six postseason series they’d win under his watch. Seven years after that hopeful preface, the Yankees can finally write the final chapter they’ve searched so long to write.

But Boone is also right: It’s all right there in front of them.

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