Yankees punch ticket to ALCS behind ace Gerrit Cole as Bombers move step closer to World Series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the land of the Royals, Gerrit Cole and the Yankees were kings.

They still have eight wins to go before they can crown themselves champions, but their ace helped them get one round closer Thursday night.

Cole tossed seven strong innings of one-run ball and the Yankees gave him enough offense while being kept in the park to beat the Royals, 3-1, and win the ALDS in four games at Kauffman Stadium.

“There’s no better feeling than going into a game where you can end someone’s season and having Gerrit Cole on the mound,” Anthony Volpe said.

In the same stadium where their season ended last year without a playoff appearance, the Yankees advanced to their fourth ALCS in the last eight years. But unlike the other three times, they will not meet the Astros, instead hosting the winner of the Guardians and Tigers — who will play Game 5 of their ALDS on Saturday — on Monday night in The Bronx for their latest chance to go to the World Series for the first time since 2009.

“Since I’ve been here with the Yankees, we haven’t secured a pennant,” Aaron Judge said. “The group that we have, how special this is, just excited for this opportunity. It’s going to be something special.”

After Cole gave the Yankees their best outing from any starter this series, the bullpen finished off a dominant ALDS with Clay Holmes throwing a perfect eighth inning and Luke Weaver doing the same in the ninth for his third save.

That made it 15 ²/₃ innings without allowing an earned run from their relievers this series.

“Fired up,” Cole said. “Had a couple IPAs with the boys, sprayed some champagne. This is the greatest.”

Cole missed the first two and a half months of the season with an elbow injury and at times battled to find his form when he returned.

But his performance Thursday night was the reason the Yankees signed him, though they hope to get a few more out of him before October is over.

“I know we missed him a big part of the year, but he shows up in moments like this and that’s all we need,” Judge said.

The Yankees entered Game 4 having gone 3-for-25 with runners in scoring position through the first three games before going 3-for-10 on Thursday to nail down the series.

They jumped out to a 1-0 lead three pitches into the game on an RBI single from Juan Soto, then got another from Gleyber Torres in the fifth and the red-hot Giancarlo Stanton in the sixth.

After the benches cleared in the bottom of the sixth when Maikel Garcia had a hard slide into second and Volpe gave him an incidental forearm while tagging him, the Royals scratched across a run off Cole to make it 3-1. Salvador Perez then came up as the potential tying run with Kauffman Stadium ready to explode, but Cole got him to pop out to end the threat.

The Royals tried to rally again in the seventh — with Tommy Pham recording his third hit in three at-bats off Cole — but Kyle Isbel came up just a few feet short of a potential game-tying home run as Cole walked off the mound with a roar.

“That fired everybody up,” Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “Gerrit, the ace that I’ve never seen in my life, the f–king confidence, the way he goes out there and carries his team and tells everybody to stay in it.”

Now the Yankees will await the winner of the Guardians and Tigers to see who will stand in the way of making it to their first World Series in 15 years. But before then, there was some time for reflection on how far the Yankees have come since last year.

“All day, I was just thinking about our season ending here in ’23,” Judge said. “This is where we ended, no playoffs. That stung. A lot of guys stuck around, were just starting at the field. A lot of what-ifs and, ‘what could we have done here?’ Guys made adjustments this offseason. Guys went out and put in the work.

“To have our season keep moving on, it’s pretty special.”