Heinous Yankees, Gerrit Cole meltdowns put World Series Game 5 in jeopardy

All the New York Yankees needed to do was play a relatively clean remainder of Game 5 to secure the victory and head back to Los Angeles with all the momentum imaginable. The Dodgers were starting to feel the World Series heat trailing 5-0 early after getting shellacked 11-4 the night prior.

But then the top of the fifth inning arrived. And the Yankees' defense, well, starting doing Yankees defense things.

With a runner on first, Aaron Judge dropped an easy fly ball and the Dodgers put runners on first and second with nobody out. That was his first error of the entire year. The next play was a ground ball in the hole that Anthony Volpe snared, but he made a bad throw to third base that pulled Jazz Chisholm off the bag for the force. Error No. 2.

Thank goodness Gerrit Cole was on the mound, though. He was still dialed in, and he struck out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani to force the Dodgers to make a play. The good news was that Cole induced a weak grounder off the bat of Mookie Betts. The bad news? He forgot to cover first base.

Betts' grounder had bizarre spin that took Anthony Rizzo further away from the bag. And Betts' speed definitely made it harder for Rizzo to make the play and dart for first base. Rizzo looked up to toss the ball to Cole, but Cole wasn't there. He was pointing to the bag for some odd reason.

A run came in to score, everybody was safe. OK. Not the end of the world. New York still had a 5-1 lead.

But guess who was up next? The hottest hitter on this lovely floating blueberry, Freddie Freeman. On a 1-2 count, Cole jammed him with a perfectly placed inside fastball, but Freeman lobbed it into center field for a two-run single.

5-3 game. Still not the end of the world, but feeling decidedly less good. Aaron Boone rightfully kept Cole in the game, though we would've probably advocated for a mound visit at ... any point? Cole was on the mound for about 20 minutes straight without a single breather.

And with Teoscar Hernandez at the plate, the right-hander could've used a break in the action. Instead, he kept firing bullets. Again, he backed Hernandez into a 1-2 count, but the Dodgers slugger wasn't fooled by the cutter Cole left over the plate.

Hernandez sent the ball over Judge's head in center field and two runs came into score. 5-5. Tie game. After the Dodgers were that weak grounder away from still trailing 5-0. Unbelievable.

Another instance of the Yankees shooting themselves in the foot and squandering every ounce of momentum they possessed. There's plenty of time to rebound, but the Yankees are already rebounding from a 3-1 deficit in the series. How much more can they possibly battle uphill with these being the most stressful possible stakes?