How Yankees blew five-run lead to lose World Series: Breaking down error-filled Game 5 that sank New York

The Dodgers scored five unearned runs to swing the Fall Classic back in their favor in the fifth inning of Game 5

The New York Yankees' efforts at making the most impossible of World Series comebacks came to grief with their 7-6 Game 5 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night. Game 5 was the loss that ended the series, which is a simple matter of record. Yet inning No. 5 may have been the single inning that snuffed out the Yankees' hopes. The Yankees' manifold mistakes of Game 5 weren't confined to that fifth inning, as we'll soon see, but it was that frame that did most of the undoing and allowed the Dodgers to prevent the series from going back to L.A. for a Game 6. 

Although Yankee fans might not desire to do so, it's time to revisit all those mistakes, most of which were concentrated in that game- and series-turning fifth inning. 

Going into that frame, the Yankees held an authoritative 5-0 lead, which translated to a 94.1% chance of winning Game 5 and keeping alive their bid to come back from down 3-0. Ace Gerrit Cole had been in vintage form and had yet to allow a hit. Straightaway, Enrique Hernández notched that elusive first hit, a single to right, for the Dodgers as the leadoff hitter in the top of the fifth. At that point, things truly fell apart for the Yankees. 

Tommy Edman popped up an outside changeup from Cole, and out in center Aaron Judge advanced on it for what figured to be a routine out. It was not: 

Judge appeared to take a peek at Hernández on the bases, which led to his first and only error of 2024. Hernández was able to hustle into second ahead of the throw. "I just didn't make the play," Judge told reporters after the season-ending loss.

Next, Will Smith bounced one to Anthony Volpe at short. The play had Volpe moving in the direction of third, to which Hernández was streaking, and Volpe attempted to make a play on the lead runner: 

A good or, really, even adequate throw probably earns the force-out on Hernández, but Volpe's throw was not true. Jazz Chisholm Jr., still relatively new to third base, was unable to bail him out with a deft scoop. It was a throwing error on Volpe, and the Dodgers had the bases loaded with no outs. 

Cole rallied to strike out Gavin Lux on four pitches, whiffing him for strike three on an up-and-away 99.4 mph fastball – one of the fastest pitches he threw all season. Then it was Shohei Ohtani. Cole threw four pitches, each a different offering, to the NL MVP in waiting, and Ohtani's injured left shoulder seemed to be acutely felt as he swung somewhat helplessly at three of them. He struck out on a knuckle curve at the bottom edge of the zone. The bags remained full of road grays, but Cole was one out from extracting himself from the inning. 

He should've gotten that third out. Mookie Betts tapped a slow grounder to Anthony Rizzo at first. Rizzo didn't charge the ball, likely on account of some confusing spin, but the real culprit was Cole and his failure to do the pitcher's basic work of covering first base on a grounder to the right side: 

As you can see, Cole didn't forget his assignment. He bolted off the mound as he should. Rather, he erred in his assumption that Rizzo would be able to make the putout unassisted. Betts was credited with a single, and he pushed across the Dodgers' first run of the game. 

"I took a bad angle to the ball," Cole said. "I wasn't sure how hard he hit it. By the time the ball got by me, I was not in a position to cover first. Neither of us were"

At that point, the Yankees were done committing fifth-inning miscues, but they weren't done giving up runs. The magma-hot Freddie Freeman singled to center to make it 5-3. Then Teoscar Hernández drove a Cole slider more than 400 feet to the wall in left center to tie the game. Cole was able to escape further indignities after a Max Muncy walk, but it took him 38 pitches to get through the 10 Dodger batters that came to the plate in the fifth. Moreover, the Yankees' five-run lead had been entirely frittered away. All of the Dodgers' runs in that inning happened with two outs, and all of them were unearned. 

The Yankees counterpunched and went back ahead with a run in the sixth. In the eighth, though, the Dodgers capitalized on Yankee gaffes again. As was the case in the fifth, Enrique Hernández, Edman, and Smith all reached before an out was recorded. When Smith, the Dodgers' No. 8 hitter, worked his four-pitch walk off Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle, it pushed the Dodgers' odds of winning Game 5, and thus the World Series, to above 50% for the first time all night. 

Luke Weaver came in, but Lux lifted a sac fly to center, and tied the game at 6-6. That brought Ohtani and his ailing shoulder to the plate. His prior plate appearance, in which he struck out against Cole in the fifth, was a non-competitive one for Ohtani, presumably because of the shoulder he partially dislocated while sliding in Game 1. Against a bat-misser like Weaver, who's shown reverse-platoon tendencies since being remade by the Yankees closer, the compromised Ohtani didn't seem a good bet to keep the line moving. Fortunately for the Dodgers, Yankees catcher Austin Wells encroached upon Ohtani's swing at a first-pitch changeup from Weaver: 

The bases were loaded again thanks to the correct call of catcher's interference – the first instance of catcher's interference in the World Series since 1982. Deprived of the second out that Ohtani might have been, the Yankees instead yielded the second sac fly of the inning. This one by Betts put the Dodgers in front for good, 7-6. 

As a capstone, the Yankees in the ninth added to the cavalcade of mistakes with a Weaver balk. By then, though, something approaching inevitability had descended upon the Bronx. Absent all the Yankee mistakes in their must-win Game 5, we'd probably be heading back to L.A. for a Game 6. Instead, the Dodgers alone are heading back to L.A. for a parade.