For the fourth time in the Aaron Judge era, the Yankees will participate in the ALCS. You remember how each of the first three trips ended, with devastating losses for the hated Astros. This time, the Astros are long gone and the Yankees match up with No. 2 seed in the AL, the Cleveland Guardians.

The Guardians had a strong 2024 campaign, going 92-69, before rallying to defeat the Tigers in five games in the ALDS. They’re not a juggernaut, but they have a more balanced roster than the Royals team that the Yankees just knocked off. Strong supporting players like Steven Kwan, Josh Naylor and Andrés Giménez back up superstar José Ramírez, while Emmanuel Clase anchors the league’s best bullpen. Here are the keys to how the Yankees can take on Cleveland and earn their first ticket to the World Series in 15 years.

1) Aaron Judge stays within himself

At this point, when Judge has a bad playoff game, the narrative surrounding his inability to score in the postseason quickly becomes a major talking point. While the narrative itself ignores Judge’s stellar performances over the course of his first few playoff series, it is true that he has been hit very poorly in the playoffs in recent seasons, and he has looked decidedly shaky in the first few matches of this series.

I’m not terribly interested in debating whether or not Judge can do it in October; he’s even done it many times in October, he might be the best hitter since Barry Bonds, and it’s only a matter of time before a great player gets it going (Bonds himself was terrible in the playoffs… until he wasn’t). That said, what is For me, it’s interesting to analyze Judge’s actual game, rather than getting lost in the exaggeration and blundering about whether or not he’s capable of getting it done when it matters most matters.

At first glance, it seemed like Judge was pushing a bit when the postseason started, and while we’ll never know Judge’s true internal thoughts and approach, we can examine his work on the field for signs of nervousness. And indeed, through the first three games of the ALDS, Judge swung at 34 of the 62 pitches he saw, a 55 percent rate that dwarfs his 42 percent rate from the regular season. Additionally, Judge offered the first pitch in half of his fourteen at-bats, something he did about 30 percent of the time through 2024.

While these swing speeds aren’t huge, they are very different from Judge’s typical, patient approach and are reminiscent of a player trying to make something happen at the board. The result was fewer favorable counts for Judge, fewer pitches to strike out and some overly eager swings, all of which naturally led to a handful of strikeouts.

Now we’re getting into “sample size of one” territory here, but Judge looked like he had calmed down after Thursday night’s game-winning Game 4. He swung at the first pitch once in his four trips to the plate, and on just five of the 20 pitches he faced that night. Unlike the first few games of the series, he found himself in the batter’s counts, such as in his sixth-inning at-bat against Lucas Erceg. After taking the first three pitches from the Kansas City closer, Judge had a 2–1 lead, and Erceg dug a sinker over the middle of the plate that Judge destroyed for a double:

That’s vintage Judge, and exactly the kind of player the Yankees need going forward. Judge seemed to see the ball just fine in Game 4, and he noted after the game that he was just trying to correct his timing to get it right. If he sticks to himself, as he did in the final against the Royals, I have no doubt he will return to playing the monster we know he is. It stands to reason that a locked-up judge would be the biggest motivator that could get the Yankees to the World Series.

2) Aaron Boone and his bullpen remain in lockstep

The collective MVP of the Yankees’ ALDS victory might have been their bullpen. Much maligned in the second half of the season, New York’s relief corps calmed the doubters at the absolute best time, providing shutdown work in all four games of the series. During the entire ALDS, zero unearned runs were charged to the Yankee bullpen over 15.2 innings (the unit did allow one inherited runner to score).

Not only that, manager Aaron Boone pushed all the right buttons in the series. With his ace working in Game 1, Boone retired Gerrit Cole after just five innings. The bullpen allowed only an unearned run the rest of the way, and the Yankees pulled out a 6–5 win. When Carlos Rodón was hit around the fourth inning of Game 2, Boone was once again proactive, turning to a bullpen that would shut out KC the rest of the way and give the offense a chance to rally.

In Game 3 it was the same story. Clarke Schmidt cruised through the first four frames, but Boone was not deterred from removing the right-hander after he ran into trouble in the fifth. Clay Holmes, Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver each recorded more than three outs as the bullpen earned a crucial win.

The only time Boone wasn’t proactive in using his bullpen was in the decisive Game 4, when he understandably allowed Cole to pitch the seventh inning on a low pitch count. That move almost came back to bite the Yankees when Kyle Isbel nearly took Cole deep for a game-tying home run, with the wind fortunately keeping the ball in the park and the Yankees in the lead.

Both trends, that of the bullpen staying locked up and Boone proactively using his best in key moments, even if those moments occur in the middle innings, should continue. Especially early in the ALCS, when the Yankees will be fully rested and will have an off day after Game 2, Boone needs to be aggressive with his most trusted relievers. The calculus may change if the series goes long and the bullpen workload becomes tiring, but for now Boone appears to have a serious weapon in his hands, and he should keep using it.

3) Carlos Rodón finds his level

It would be easy to argue that Gerrit Cole is the biggest key in the starting rotation for the Yankees. If their ace produces two starts in this series, similar to his Game 4 gem against the Royals, the Bombers will be in prime position to advance.

But I think an argument can be made that Rodón’s performance is more of an X-factor, so to speak. Cole’s performance is steadier than Rodón’s; the ace is unlikely to be much better than he was in Game 4 of the ALDS, and probably not much worse than he was in Game 1. He has as high a floor as any Yankee pitcher, and a shorter range of plausible outcomes over the course of a series than Rodon.

Rodón, on the other hand, can make us feel the entire spectrum of human emotions in the course of just a few innings of one of his performances. He’s becoming increasingly important in this series, where he’ll pitch Game 1 and Game 5, and if he can get his better results at least once, if not twice, against the Guardians, it’s hard to imagine the Yankees’ season ending in the following week.

Rodón’s first inning of the postseason was some of the most scintillating pitching you’ll ever see. The southpaw dotted sliders at the knees and blew 98 mph gas at the top of the zone. He limped off the mound after striking out, clearly not only feeling invigorated, but enjoying himself while performing in a high-stakes environment:

Rodón had entered playoff mode, with his average four-seam fastball reaching a blistering 90 mph, nearly two full ticks higher than his regular season average. But just as crucial to Rodón’s brilliant start as his performance was his execution. Rodón showed some of his best command of the season through the first three innings against the Royals, staying on the edges of the zone with a slider and barely giving hitters a single fastball over the plate to drive:

And it was the execution that torpedoed Rodon in that disastrous fourth inning. The Royals chased Rodón with a home run and three singles, all on pitches that struck out significantly more than almost anything Rodón showed them in the earlier innings. Here is the field location for each of the four hits Rodon yielded in the fourth:

It was a shocking mid-game regression from Rodon after looking so sharp at the start of the game. Because Rodón came out of the gate so hot, it’s easy to wonder if he went out a little too hard, only to collapse after a bend through the lineup. It should be noted that Rodón’s velo in the fourth was still 97 mph, but speed isn’t the only sign of a pitcher losing his nerve. Deteriorations in command and execution can also be signs of fatigue, and in this case it is likely that Rodon was simply unable to continue executing at the level he showed in the first inning after having all that energy consumed.

For this series it will be crucial that Rodón finds his level. If it turns out that he cannot come forward as powerfully as he did in the first inning against KC and still perform at a high level in the middle innings, Rodón will have to slow down and find the amount of energy he can reasonably expend . without burning out. A 3.2-inning performance in Game 2 of the ALDS wasn’t a backbreaker for the Yankees, not with a rested bullpen coming out and heading into an off day. Such short starts will carry a more severe penalty in the ALCS, with a maximum of two days off in a nine-day period. The Yankees need Rodón to find himself in Game 1 and give the Yankees the two-aces lead in the rotation they envisioned when they signed him two winters ago.