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    • Yankees lose to Guardians in ALCS Game 3, but now focus on rebounding for Game 4
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    Yankees lose to Guardians in ALCS Game 3, but now focus on rebounding for Game 4

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    CLEVELAND – Game 3 had turned into a heavyweight battle, one dizzying swing after another – starting with devastating late home runs from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

    “They got the final blow,” Clarke Schmidt said of the Cleveland Guardians Thursday evening in a quiet Yankees clubhouse at Progressive Field.

    Schmidt and his teammates were still absorbing how the Guardians – down to their final bat – came back to life in this AL Championship Series, with a stunning 7-5 victory in 10 innings.

    David Fry’s two-run homer off Clay Holmes ended it and set the Yankees on their way to a new task; forget how close you came to a 3-0 lead in this best-of-seven series and win Game 4.

    Before Fry’s final home run heroics in October, pinch-hitter Jhonkensy Noel launched a two-out, game-tying homer in the ninth that sounded like a cannon shot in town.

    “It’s never an ideal time, especially now,” Stanton said of someone like that getting away, forcing everyone in gray to move on quickly. “But there is no choice.”

    And this is where Yankees manager Aaron Boone believes his club has another advantage.

    “We’ve had some tough losses that we’ve bounced back from,” Boone said, and that’s “what that room has been great at all year.”

    “We won the East, best (AL) record and all that, but … we’ve had some tough stretches,” Boone said. “And these guys come every day ready to roll and can flush it pretty easily.”

    Yankee’s job to bounce back against Guardians in Game 4

    Still, you wonder a bit about the physical form of this club that participates in Game 4 on Friday (first pitch at 8:08 PM).

    That charmed postseason life of Holmes and Weaver took a hit in Game 3, and they are the only Yankees relievers to have worked in all seven postseason games.

    Reliever Ian Hamilton left with a left calf issue and is headed for an MRI, and veteran first baseman Anthony Rizzo — who was called in late for defense — cost them two baserunners as he plays with broken fingers that are still healing are.

    Before Carlos Rodon gets the ball here in Game 5, the Yankees send out Luis Gil for his first playoff start in Game 4 after 19 days of rest (but he has thrown a simulated game, which puts him on the right schedule).

    But it also makes you wonder about the psyche of Cleveland’s world-class closer.

    Back-to-back, Judge and Stanton delivered devastating shots in the eighth inning against Emmanuel Clase, armed with a cutter that was nearly unhittable throughout the regular season.

    Clase was more human in October, and Judge followed a two-out, four-pitch walk in the eighth inning off Juan Soto with a bullet that barely cleared the right field wall.

    While the Yankees were still celebrating that two-strike, 99-mph cutter that Judge hit 350 feet for a game-tying home run, Stanton hit the go-ahead shot.

    “We’re going to see him again,” warned Stanton, who fouled two cutters before getting a slider he could control — more than 400 feet to center.

    “Kind of a classic game,” Rizzo said, though Judge didn’t go there.

    “A loss is a loss,” the Yankees captain said. “We can’t dwell on it, we can’t hang our heads… refocus and get ready for the next game.”

    A battle of bullpens in ALCS Game 3

    Weaver had recorded the last of all five Yankees postseason wins and he was ready for a sixth.

    That’s when Lane Thomas went from trailing 0-2 to a full count and hit a two-out double off the center field wall to give Cleveland life in the ninth.

    Boone had Holmes warmed up and ready, but he felt like Weaver — who got the final out in the eighth — hadn’t shown any sign of distress.

    “It felt like he was the guy that was going to get it there,” Boone said.

    “I feel good,” Weaver insisted, complaining most about Thomas’ hitting. “Sometimes you had to slow the game down (and) you didn’t have the execution at the time when you needed to.

    “But I feel like I’m in a good place.”

    The pitch for Noel wasn’t in a good place, a change that backfired a bit.

    “I just threw the worst pitch of the game,” Weaver said. “And he got it.”

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