The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Judge homers, Yanks are AL wild card team
NEW YORK — In a way, manager Joe Girardi figures, Aaron Judge and some of the young New York Yankees without any postseason experience have already have gotten the feel of playoff pressure.
The Yankees wound up with an AL wild-card spot Saturday, beating Toronto 2-1 on Judge’s 52nd home run shortly before Boston clinched the AL East crown.
New York needed two wins and two losses by Boston to force a tiebreaker Monday at Yankee Stadium. Instead, the Yankees will host Minnesota in the wildcard game Tuesday.
“I started thinking about that the last couple of days where in a sense they’re elimination games for us,” Girardi said. “We were five down coming home from the road trip and our guys just continued to play well. They continued to play loose. They continued to make pitches, grind out at-bats and that was encouraging to me because it’s not like we’ve had a chance to turn it off and I like that.”
The wild-card winner will face Cleveland in the best-of-five AL Division Series. Boston, which beat Houston about 20 minutes after the Yankees won, is set to take on the Astros in the playoffs.
Replacement starter CC Sabathia (14-5) won his fifth straight decision. With the Yankees still in contention for the division title to begin the day, Girardi opted for Sabathia to pitch on his regular four days’ rest in place of the originally scheduled Jaime Garcia.
The veteran left-hander didn’t disappoint, allowing four hits and striking out six over 5 2/3 shutout innings. The Yankees (91-70) improved to a season-high 21 games over .500.
Sabathia’s only close call came with one out in the sixth, when Ryan Goins lifted a fly to deep right that was snagged by a fan reaching over the wall. The initial ruling on the field was interference, which was challenged and upheld after a 38-second review.
Goins got a double and was stranded when Sabathia fanned Teoscar Hernandez and reliever Chad Green retired Josh Donaldson on a flyout.
Sabathia is 5-0 with a 2.91 ERA in eight starts since returning from the DL on Aug. 19.