Yankees can’t hide from their miscues against a fellow heavyweight

LOS ANGELES — Hey Yankees, you are not in Kansas City anymore.

Or Cleveland.

The lightweight portion of the postseason program is gone and on the other side of the World Series field is a mirror image of the Yankees — just one that plays the game cleaner. One certain to make the Yankees pay for transgressions in a way that the less star-studded, less powerful Royals and Guardians could not.

The Yankees made mistakes in the field and on the bases and could not overcome it. Not in the wall of noise that was Dodger Stadium in World Series Game 1. Not when the Dodgers have the kind of firepower in which the Yankees could get through Shohei Ohtani and pass on Mookie Betts and still have Freddie Freeman. Bases loaded. Two outs. Bottom of the 10th. Down one run.

Freeman, who did not play with a sprained right ankle in two of the final three NLCS games — both started by a Mets lefty — crushed a first-pitch Nestor Cortes fastball for a grand slam. So the Dodgers won a dramatic Game 1, 6-3.

If you want to lambaste Aaron Boone for going with Cortes, who had not pitched since Sept. 18, over another lefty, Tim Hill, who has been so reliable since joining the team in late June, sure, go ahead. But the bigger problem is that the Yankees manager has had no success in cleaning up bad baseball by the Yankees all year. It persisted against AL Central lightweights in the first two rounds as did Aaron Judge’s struggles.

But this is a different class of opponent — and bad baseball and no Judge impact is going to be near impossible to overcome against a Dodgers team in the World Series for the fourth time in eight years.

The Yankees twice gifted the 90 feet between second and third to the Dodgers. First, Juan Soto could not come up with a slicing Enrique Hernandez fly ball in the fifth and compounded the non-catch by being unable to corral the ball quickly. So Hernandez had a triple. In the eighth inning, Ohtani hit one high off the right-field wall for what should have been a double. Gleyber Torres, perhaps the most inattentive of Yankee defenders, had one job on accepting a relay that had no chance to nab Ohtani — simply surround the ball and don’t let it get away. But his attempt at a backhand eluded him and Ohtani raced to third on the error.

On both occasions, the 90 feet to third were vital because the Dodgers scored without a hit — with sacrifice flies. Los Angeles did not get a hit with runners in scoring position until Freeman’s grand slam, which was helped along by another iffy defensive play: Oswaldo Cabrera not coming up with a backhand of a Tommy Edman grounder to produce at least an out with a runner on first and one down. Alex Verdugo then made a terrific play to catch an Ohtani foul pop while going over the left-field sidewall, and Betts was intentionally walked to fill the bases for Freeman.

That eliminated a 3-2 Yankees edge created when Jazz Chisholm singled, stole second and third and scored on a slow Anthony Volpe roller to short that Tommy Edman bobbled. Anthony Rizzo stopped short of second. He said he wanted to make sure not to be tagged and create the potential for a double play. But where the ball rolled and if Rizzo would have gone in with a slide, he almost certainly would have been safe and there was no shot at a double play. Would the Yankees have scored more there to open up the game? Who knows?

Normally, the way the Yankees overcome their bad baseball is with might. And Giancarlo Stanton’s two-run homer in the sixth provided a 2-1 lead. If Judge was hitting like Stanton this October, they would just put him in Monument Park now. Stanton homered for the fourth straight game, becoming the only player to ever do that twice because he also previously had homered in five straight. His last five hits have all been homers. He simply is one of the most clutch postseason power hitters in MLB history.

And Judge so far has not been close to that. He struck out in his first three at-bats, went 1-for-5 and with a break-it-open chance in a 2-2 game with two on and two out in the ninth — after Soto was intentionally walked in front of him — Judge popped out.

“There’s been a couple [chances missed] — you go back to that opportunity there in the ninth,” Judge said. “But I’ve got to keep swinging, keep trying to get on base, especially with Big G swinging the bat as well as he is.”

This needs to happen quickly with the Dodgers having stolen Game 1. Judge is 6-for-36 this postseason with 16 strikeouts. He’s hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. In 54 playoff games, Judge is batting .203 and has struck out in 34 percent of his plate appearances. He has one hit in his last 22 playoff at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Perhaps the Yankees can overcome the sloppiness. Perhaps they can overcome not having an impactful Judge. But they are not going to survive both.

Because the Royals and Guardians are no longer on the schedule.