RIDE COULD BE WILD!
Pressure on Yanks to beat Twins but watch out if they do
Win or lose on Tuesday night the Yankees have a future that all but a couple of the other 29 teams in baseball would gladly take over their own, but let’s not pretend as if this is some type of house-money game. The format makes it as dicey as it is nerve-wracking: being the better team guarantees nothing when it’s one game with the season on the line, and yet it would be a huge disappointment if the Yankees can’t find a way to beat the Twins. There are plenty of tangible reasons for that, which I’ll get to, but none as compelling as my sense that if they do move on they could turn this into a memorable October, playing at a level in September that makes them capable of beating the mighty Indians, and then, well, who knows. When I ran that idea by a scout for one of the other playoff teams who was assigned to the Yankees in recent weeks, he agreed — to a point.
“I don’t know if anybody can beat (Corey) Kluber the way he’s pitching," the scout said, “but other than that, I see the Yankees being as dangerous as anybody right now, especially with (Aaron) Judge doing damage. You can see they’re playing with a lot of confidence — they seem to feed off Judge, now that he’s hot again.
“And they have more strikeout-relievers in that bullpen than anybody, even Cleveland, and as we’ve seen, that plays in the postseason. So it’s kind of a cliché, but the Yankees are a team you don’t want to play right now.”
In short, these are no longer the upstart Yankees for whom there were low expectations when the season began. They won 91 games and could have — maybe should have — won more if two of the most dominant relievers in the game, Aroldis Chapman and Dellin Betances, hadn’t each gone haywire for too-long stretches of the season.
They also went 20-8 in September, raising their level when every game felt vital as they chased the Red Sox all the way to the second-to-last day of the season.
Now, Chapman is back to looking unhittable, which is crucial: he gave up three hits in 12 innings in September, and no runs, while racking up 17 strikeouts.
Meanwhile, as the scout noted, the Yankees seem to feed off Judge when he’s going well, as he comes off a ridiculous September in which he hit 15 home runs, walked 28 times, slugged .889 and had an OPS of 1.352.
Yet the bottom line is the Yankees are a more complete team than anyone could have imagined when the season began, all the more so since the trades that Brian Cashman made in July, winning games down the stretch with contributions up and down the roster.
So that’s really the issue here. The Yankees are playing too well for the season to end in a wild-card loss. They’re having too much fun, reveling in their youth to the point of
doing anti-Yankee things like their fake-TV interviews in the dugout, for it to come to a sudden stop.
As someone who loves watching big-game baseball, I just want to see them get to that series with the Indians, because it could be great theater.
But there is no getting around the unpredictability of a onegame scenario.
The Yankees may own Ervin Santana, if you go by his 6.43 ERA over six starts in this Yankee Stadium, but it was only two weeks ago that they were locked up in a 1-1 game in the sixth inning against him, and if that’s the scenario on Tuesday night, the level of angst at the Stadium will be palpable.
But they did go on to win that game, knocking Santana out in the sixth inning, even though he gave up only two runs, and swept the Twins in that three-game series.
And while their history of beating the Twins in the postseason may not be relevant to this young Minnesota team, the Bronx can be an intimidating environment for the opposition, especially for a team with little postseason experience.
No less significant, the Yankees posted the best home record in the American League this season, going 51-30, in part because the home run-friendly ballpark plays to their strength. Of their league-leading 241 long balls, in fact, they hit 140 of them at home, where they averaged five and a half runs a game.
On the other hand, those confines weren’t as friendly to Luis Severino, who gave up 15 of the 21 home runs he allowed this season while pitching at home — which partly explains his 3.54 home ERA vs. 2.21 on the road.
Still, Severino just finished up a season that likely will get him a third-place in the Cy Young voting, behind Kluber and Chris Sale, by going 3-0 with a 2.10 ERA in September, and when he has any type of fastball command, he dominates the best of lineups.
Nevertheless, his only poor start in the final month was against these Twins, when a 13-pitch at-bat by Joe Mauer led to a 43-pitch third inning and convinced Joe Girardi to save his ace for another day.
Does that matter? It shouldn’t, considering that Severino followed his worst start of the season, giving up eight runs to the Red Sox in August, by holding them to two hits over six innings three weeks later.
So unless the big stage somehow affects Severino in his first postseason start, the odds are stacked in the Yankees’ favor.
Bottom line, although this surprise season was only the first step toward a return to glory for this famous franchise, these Yankees are playing as if the future is now.
That makes for loads of pressure in this wildcard game. It will be fascinating to see how the Yankees handle it.