MLB playoffs 2018: The Red Sox are just better. Now what, Yankees?

The Red Sox won 108 regular season games, eight games more than the Yankees.

NEW YORK — The ball was climbing higher and higher, the left-field wall in sight, and all 49,641 witnesses at Yankee Stadium reacted like this was an October moment for the ages.

The man who hit it, however, wasn’t so sure. Gary Sanchez knew he got under the meatball offering from Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel a fraction of an inch. He knew that fly ball had a chance to make history and send this ALDS back to Fenway Park with a walk-off grand slam.

“But I wasn’t sure,” he said.

He was right. The ball settled in the glove of Boston left fielder Andrew Benitendi for the least satisfying sacrifice fly of all time. One batter later, Yankees rookie Gleyber Torres grounded to third to end a 4-3 Boston victory in Game 4, and the Red Sox were celebrating for the second time in three weeks on the Bronx infield.

This game — this ninth inning, really — was a microcosm of the entire Yankees season. The Yankees were chasing the Red Sox from the beginning, trying to claw their way back into this game with a dramatic rally in the final inning.

But just like their 162-game journey that ended in a distant second place despite those 100 victories, they came up short. The Red Sox are better. That is the cold, hard truth, and they’ll be favored to win their city’s first title in (cough, gag, cough) 20 long months.

This is the only question that matters heading into 2019: How are these Yankees going to close that gap?

“I’m sure there are going to be a lot of meaningful games next year between the Yankees and the Red Sox down the stretch,” Yankees veteran outfielder Brett Gardner said. “We’ve just got to find a way to get a little better, and I think we will.”

They said the same thing last autumn, too, after Boston beat them for the AL East crown. They changed managers, added the reigning National League MVP to build the most homer-happy lineup in baseball history, made all sorts of moves at the trade deadlines and injected a few more talented young players into their clubhouse.

The Yankees got nine games better in the standings. The Red Sox, meanwhile, improved by 15 games. All those moves, and the Yankees were still listening to the sound of packing tape tearing at cardboard boxes as the Red Sox were hearing the champagne corks again.

Giancarlo Stanton comes up small in ALDS

Oh, they had fun at the Yankees expense, too. Aaron Judge had marched past their clubhouse at Fenway with a boom box playing “New York, New York” after the Yankees’ Game 2 victory, so you can bet the Red Sox were blaring a little Sinatra as they sprayed the bubbly.

“Wow, good song,” Boston utility man Brock Holt, who hit for the cycle in Game 3, said with a smile. “I like this song.”

The Red Sox had the better lineup in the ALDS — a small sample size, to be sure, but that’s baseball. J.D. Martinez, the Boston MVP candidate, completely outclassed his counterpart in the Yankees lineup with hits in all four games and six RBI.

Giancarlo Stanton had four measly singles to show for his first playoff series in the Bronx. He came to the plate in that thrilling ninth inning, with runners on first and second and Kimbrel missing with everything, and struck out weakly on a curveball off the plate.

But the biggest mismatch might have been in the dugouts. Aaron Boone took a passive approach to the two biggest games of the season, twice leaving his starters in too long with devastating results, while Alex Cora was aggressive from start to finish.

How does it matter if the Yankees clearly had the better regular season if Cora brings in Chris Sale, their ace starter, into the game in the eighth inning as the bridge to Kimbrel? Boone was a fine regular-season manager, but remember, the man he replaced, Joe Girardi, won a World Series and reached the ALCS last year in part because of his expert handling of bullpen situations.

Boone looked like a rookie. He’ll have to learn from this rocky week, and hope that this time next October, the Yankees can counter the Red Sox’s strength with more stability in their starting rotation.

“Obviously, we have some decisions, a lot of things are going to happen between now and next year,” Boone said. “But I think we’re very close to being a championship club right now. We’re just got to continue to improve on the margins in every fashion.”

That’ll be up to general manager Brian Cashman, who enters his ninth straight offseason without a championship. The two teams that have beat the Yankees in the past two Octobers will play for the pennant now, and being the third best team in the American League will satisfy no one.

This team is just like that Gary Sanchez fly ball in the ninth inning — so tantalizingly close to something special that this city would have remembered forever.

But not quite. Again.

Steve Politi may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.