BRING ’EM ON!

Yankees rout A’s to set up ALDS showdown with Bosox Boone pushes right buttons

The second-guessers were dressed as first-guessers when Aaron Boone selected Luis Severino to start the biggest game of the Yankees’ season on Wednesday night.

Boone’s best starter across the f inal two months of the season was J.A. Happ, and he smothered the A’s the last time he faced them. Masahiro Tanaka was also in the mix.

Still, Boone said he listened to all the voices gathered in Boston last Saturday night and opted for Severino, who pitched like Cy Young in the first half of the season and Cy Done in the second.

Then, just as Severino was rewarding Boone for giving him the ball in the wild-card game, the manager was calling for Dellin Betances in the fifth inning. Severino had thrown four shutout innings in which the A’s didn’t have a hit. Yes, the pitch XXXXXXX: count was asdfkljh climbing and the slkfhj first laksjdhfl two A’s kajshfl singled in the fifth, jkahfl threatening kjfljsadf the skimpy two-run Yankees’ lead. And he asfdkjh asklfjdh asklfjasdf did walk four.

“We wanted Dellin for that part of the order,’’ Boone said of lifting Severino for Betances to face Matt Chapman, Jed Lowrie and Khris Davis, the A’s Nos. 2, 3 and 4 hitters. “I was willing to go to him as early as we were.’’

Betances rewarded Boone by retiring Chapman on a fly to right, Lowrie on a pop to center and striking out Davis with a filthy breaking ball. Betances than overpowered the A’s in the sixth when he struck out two of three hitters he faced.

Aaron Judge provided a tworun homer in the f irst, Luke Voit contributed a two-run triple in the sixth and Giancarlo Stanton homered in the eighth, but the biggest reason the Yankees topped the A’s 7-2 in front of an enthusiastic and loud sold-out crowd of 49,620 at Yankee Stadium was Boone’s decision to bring Betances into a game at a juncture he hadn’t worked since 2014, when he had not yet announced himself as perhaps the best reliever in baseball.

The victory sets up a best-offive ALDS against the Red Sox that opens Friday night in Fenway Park and promises to be smothered in bedlam.

Starting S eve r i n o, wh o allowed two hits, walked four and fanned seven in four-plus innings, turned out right. Calling on Betances when Boone did worked out almost as well as the home run Boone hit 15 years ago against the Red Sox that sent the Yankees to the World Series. And Boone’s magic touch didn’t stop there.

With the Yankees clinging to a 2-0 lead in the top of the sixth, Boone replaced third baseman Miguel Andujar with Adeiny Hechavarria in hopes of upgrading the defense after Andujar made one throwing error and was saved by Voit from another.

“I was pretty convicted with it,’’ Boone said about replacing a rookie who hit .297 with 27 homers, drove in 92 runs and posted an .855 OPS, but did commit 15 errors. “Once he hit [infield single in the fifth] felt it was the right thing to do.’’

An inning later with the Yankees leading, 6-0, Hechavarria jumped to snag Marcus Semien’s liner that was headed for a leadoff double. The play looked larger in the eighth when Davis hit a two-run homer off Zach Britton and cut the lead to four runs.

“We needed to slow them down,’’ Aaron Hicks said of Boone’s deci s i on to br i ng Betances in at that point. “That was big for us.’’

Now it doesn’t get much bigger than Yankees-Red Sox. Remember how Boston’s fourgame sweep in early August squashed the Yankees’ chances of winning the AL East by dropping them 9½ games back?

Asked about the sweep’s effect on the Yankees, Hicks said, “It doesn’t matter, we are in the postseason.’’

With Boone, whose bold moves couldn’t have worked out better in the biggest game of his brief managerial career.