NEW YORK – The frustration did not permeate the home clubhouse of Yankee Stadium on Monday evening. A slew of missed opportunities combined to ruin the New York Yankees’ chance to push the Kansas City Royals one loss from playoff elimination, but the frustration didn’t surface in the quiet room. There was no anger whatsoever. Emotions were kept under control.

The heavily favored Yankees instead exuded cool confidence after their 4-2 loss in Game 2, a result that shifted home field advantage to the Royals in a best-of-five American League Division Series tied at one game per piece on the way to Missouri for Wednesday’s game 3.

“It still feels the same, that we’re going to win (the series),” Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “I don’t feel like anyone feels any different. We’re going to go out there and keep doing our thing. We still don’t feel like any team is better than us. We had a lot of missed opportunities tonight, so they just got lucky .”

For three innings on Monday, the Yankees played as the superior club.

Carlos Rodon, feeding off the raucous home crowd, struck out 12 pitches in the first inning with an electric fastball that reached 98 mph. Two innings later, Giancarlo Stanton hit a one-hopper into the hole that Royals star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. couldn’t field cleanly with his backhand to score Gleyber Torres from third base for the game’s first run, drawing a deafening roar.

While Rodón cruised — throwing just 39 pitches in three innings — Royals starter Cole Ragans, who was dominant over six scoreless innings against the Baltimore Orioles in the AL Wild Card Series five days earlier, needed 70 pitches to get nine outs. Yankee Stadium was buzzing. A debilitating hit seemed imminent. It never came.

The Yankees didn’t score another run until Chisholm led off the ninth inning with a home run to briefly breathe new life into the building. They took Game 1 despite not making any money with runners in scoring position, but they couldn’t overcome the shortcoming in Game 2, leaving eight runners on base and going 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position. New York is 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position in the series.

“They made their pitches when they needed to,” Yankees center Aaron Judge said. “We had a couple guys in scoring position and they surrendered and made some tough throws on us. But in those situations we had to come through and break things up.”

As in Game 1, Judge’s first at-bat in Game 2 came after Torres and Juan Soto reached base. And just like in Game 1, he struck out for the first of three consecutive outs to end the threat.

The presumptive AL MVP, who went 10-for-74 with 28 strikeouts in 18 postseason games since 2020, just missed a home run to right field in his second at-bat, walked in his third at-bat and reached base through an infield. single in the eighth. He finished 1-for-3 on Tuesday after going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and a walk in Game 1.

“You can never discount him,” Soto said. “He’s the best hitter of all time right now. He’s just doing his thing. Had a little trouble with the fastball today, but I know he’ll bounce back.”

The Royals had no problems on that front during a four-run fourth inning. Veteran catcher Salvador Perez sparked the outburst with a leadoff home run off Rodón for his first postseason home run in nine years.

“Every time Sal is awake, you’re always on the edge of your seat,” Witt said. “You never know what’s going to happen, so he just came up big, and that’s what players like that do.”

From there, the Royals used four singles and dashing baserunning to score three more. Yuli Gurriel singled and took second base on a wild pitch by Rodón. Two batters later, Tommy Pham lined a run to center field and 40-year-old Gurriel scored from second base. Pham then swept to second and scored on Garrett Hampson’s single, which suddenly chased Rodón from the game.

Each of the four run-scoring hits came on sliders. They left Yankee Stadium in silence as a “Let’s go, Royals” chant broke out during the Kansas City Chiefs’ win at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Yankees and Royals meet Wednesday in the Arrowhead parking lot for the first postseason game at Kauffman Stadium since Game 2 of the 2015 World Series.

The Royals will play the host with confidence knowing that Witt – the presumptive AL MVP runner-up – is 0-for-10 in the series, that their vaunted starting rotation has yielded just eight innings in two games and that they have only one needed extra base. strike on Tuesday to gain home field advantage. The Yankees will take the field believing they are the better team that just suffered a misfortune in Game 2 and expecting a bounce-back performance.

“I think that’s been a hallmark of our success,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Especially after some tough games where we won something or lost something late or just got hit hard. These guys have a lot of confidence and that’s understandable, and we’ll be ready to go into Game 3.”