Yanks run away with wild card
NEW YORK Aaron Judge got the party started with a two-run homer nine pitches in. Luis Severino let out a primal scream after escaping a bases-loaded jam with 100 mph heat. Giancarlo Stanton capped the mauling with monstrous drive in his post-season debut.
From the first inning on, there was little doubt. Next stop for the Yankees: Fenway Park and the rival Red Sox.
Going ahead quickly against reliever-turned-starter Liam Hendriks, the Yankees pounded the Oakland Athletics 7-2 Wednesday night to win their second straight AL wild-card game.
Severino atoned for flopping in his post-season debut last year, and late-season spark Luke Voit added a two-run triple off Blake Treinen in a four-run sixth, missing a home run by inches. Stanton added 443-foot drive off the Oakland closer in the eighth that landed in left field’s second deck, completing a power show by the team that set a major league record for most home runs in a season.
After one of those boisterous Bronx celebrations that used to be an October staple, the Yankees will take a train to Boston for a best-of-five Division Series starting Friday, a matchup of 100-win heavyweights. By the late innings, the sellout crowd was chanting “We want Boston!”
The Red Sox went 10-9 against the Yankees this year.
For Oakland, it the latest disappointing defeat in what has stretched into decades of disappointment. The A’s have lost eight straight winner-takeall post-season games since beating Willie Mays and the New York Mets in Game 7 of the 1973 World Series, and dropped all four of their postseason matchups against the Yankees.
New York became the first team since the 2001 A’s to reach triple digits in wins and fail to finish first — the Red Sox set a team record with 108 victories.
Yankees fans fretted about an all-or-nothing knockout match, thinking back to last year when Severino fell behind Minnesota 3-0 just 10 pitches in. New York rallied for an 8-4 win against the Twins, but the memory was still raw.
Severino was 14-2 at the AllStar break this year but slumped badly in the second half, and rookie manager Aaron Boone’s decision to start the 24-year-old right-hander against the A’s instead of J.A. Happ or Masahiro Tanaka was intensely debated — the type of argument Boone used to enjoy as a television analyst who broadcast last year’s wildcard game.
Severino made the move look like genius.