Four pitches against Shane Bieber were all it took for the Yankees to announce in a very loud voice they had put an up-and-down regular season in flames.
A single to right by DJ LeMahieu was followed by Aaron Judge viciously attacking a first-pitch fastball from Bieber and hitting it over the right-center field fence.
“DJ and Aaron kind of delivered a left jab and a right hook,’’ Gerrit Cole said of the first two batters landing blows to Bieber’s midsection that launched the Yankees to a 12-3 victory in Tuesday night’s Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series at Progressive Field in Cleveland.
Luke Voit’s RBI double in the third stretched the lead to 3-0. Brett Gardner and LeMahieu drove in a run each in the fourth to make it 5-1 and Gleyber Torres ended Bieber’s night with a two-run homer in the fifth.
“When I come to the field I prepare myself really well,’’ said Torres, who hit a pedestrian .243 in 42 regular-season games. “When I go to home plate I feel great.’’
It showed since Torres went 4-for-4, drew a walk and drove in three runs.
The beating didn’t stop when Bieber vanished. A four-run seventh was highlighted by Gardner hitting a two-run homer to center and a two-run single by Torres. Giancarlo Stanton was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts until homering in the ninth.
Billed as perhaps the best pitching matchup of the entire postseason, it was a dud because Bieber got whacked. While Judge jumped on Bieber, the prohibitive favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award, Cole smothered the Indians.
Jose Ramirez got him for an RBI double in the second and Josh Naylor homered in the fourth. Naylor, who went 4-for-4, was the only Indians hitter to give Cole a problem.
Pitching with his infant son in the seats for the first time, Cole gave up six hits and struck out 13 in seven innings to help put the Yankees in position to win the best-of-three series Wednesday night in Game 2.
Masahiro Tanaka, who is 5-3 with a microscopic 1.76 ERA in eight postseason starts, gets the assignment for the Yankees. He will be opposed by Carlos Carrasco. Should a third and deciding Game 3 be required to decide which team advances to the ALDS, the Indians will start Zach Plesac and the Yankees likely will go with veteran lefty J.A. Happ.
“That is why I got out of bed this morning, to hit that pitch,’’ Judge said of Bieber’s 94 mph fastball that caught too much of the plate. “It is about trying to hunt those mistakes. He gets a lot of strikeouts on off-speed. Anytime you get something out over the plate it is a reaction and you try and get the barrel on it. That is what kind of happened there. DJ was able to get on and set the tone and I was trying to do the same thing.’’
The tone had to sound like a grenade going off inside the Indians’ heads. It is one thing for your ace to get beat in the opening game of a very short series. It is completely different to see the best pitcher in baseball get annihilated.
“We knew our at-bats had to be good. We knew his stuff was going to be good. We did a really good job of laying off his breaking balls down in the zone,’’ said Gardner who was 3-for-5. “When he was in the zone I thought our guys did a really good job of putting pressure on him and making him pitch from the stretch.’’
One victory doesn’t win a series, but when a team tears into the best pitcher in the game and needs to win one of two to advance, it feels like a little more than a routine victory.