The playoffs bring one harsh revelation: This is what well-coached teams look like

Last night, watching Jake Bauers did it. 

Bauers, you know, is Milwaukee's HR guy. This year, he led the team with 26. And last night, he finished a grueling 11-pitch at-bat - a Fox barker christened him "the Marathon Man" - that drained Dodger pitcher Blake Snell the way Tik-Tok does my iPhone4 - with a game-changing blast. It followed Bauer's game two heroics, when he coaxed 12-pitches out of Yoshi Yamamoto, before winning a walk that flattened the pitcher's spirit like a bootheel on a ladybug. 

Long before he discovered Milwaukee, Yank fans may remember Bauers from the 2023 team. Over 272 at-bats, he hit 12 HRs - "Jake Bauers, the Man of the Hour!" cried John Sterling - though he hit a measly .202. It was the season of Bauers, Willie Calhoun, Billy McKinney and Franchy Cordero, the four boners of the apocalypse. "Jackie" Donaldson played 3B, next to SS Anthony Volpe, who hit 21 HRs and was hailed as the next Bobby Witt Jr. The Yankees that year finished fourth in the AL East.  

I cannot say the Yankees should have - or could have - kept Bauers for the last three years. The ebbs and flows of baseball rosters would kill such a chance. But last night's 11-pitch duel was the stuff of Derek Jeter and/or Jorge Posada - or Jose Altuve and/or Freddie Freeman. (These days, it's dangerous for Yank fans to look back on October heroes. The list of failures far exceeds our successes.)  

And when you watch the games still happening, you generally see well-coached teams playing with fundamentals that the Yankees have abandoned through 16 Octobers. Instead of winning a ring, they collapse into a chaos of excuses. And often, you find a former Yankee stepping out of our miserable past. David Robertson. Nathan Eovaldi. Aroldis Chapman. Mike Lowell. Now, Jake Bauers.

Nothing changes. Another hard, lost October. Is there nothing else to watch?