Yanks finally KO mighty Keuchel

THE YANKEES already had the Astros on the run, it seemed, after that Game 4 comeback created a level of noise and hostility the likes of which the young AL West champs had never experienced. And that was before the home team slayed the dragon in Game 5, finally finding a way to rough up Dallas Keuchel, Yankee-killer extraordinaire.

Suffice it to say the Yankees are ready to go for the kill on the road, as they did in the ALDS.

For that matter, the Astros couldn’t look more ready to be put away. No doubt they flew home to Houston at warp speed Wednesday night, surely feeling like tourists who’d been mugged in the big, bad city.

Keuchel was their great hope, their coat of armor to ward off the evil spirits in the Bronx. And he was gone in the fifth inning, losing to the Yankees for the first time ever.

Speaking of which, perhaps the lefty invited a bit of bad karma by invoking the old Evil Empire line in referring to the Yankees during his pre-start press conference on Tuesday.

He wasn’t being snarky, saying that getting booed here in the Evil Empire was a sign of respect, but do you really want to go there? Was he maybe a little too confident of his dominance over the Yankees?

In any case, the team he has owned forever finally got to him. The final was 5-0 as the Yankees rode Masahiro Tanaka’s dominant start to a drama-free victory that gives them a 3-2 lead in this ALCS and puts them tantalizingly close to going to the World Series for the first time since 2009. That still seems rather astonishing, in one sense, yet at this point it also feels practically inevitable, after these three games in the Bronx. Of course, they still have to win a game in Houston to close the deal, and that may not be easy, but least now they’ve given themselves some breathing room, meaning they don’t necessarily have to beat Justin Verlander, who shut them down in a Game 2 gem. After finally getting to Keuchel, however, the Yankees probably would feel confident facing Sandy Koufax in his prime in Game 6. So how did they do it? Todd Frazier said they made an adjustment, making a concession to the late movement on Keuchel’s pitches by trying not to look anywhere but in the middle of the plate. “A lot of times you cut the plate in half, and look one side or the other,” Frazier said. “But if you do that against him, his ball tends to move off the plate, the two-seamer and change-up going one way, the cutter and slider the other way. “So by looking middle, you give yourself a chance to hit strikes. That was the approach, to make him throw strikes, and when he did, we got him.” They got to him early too, which was important for their own self-belief, and for what it did to the Astros. You could almost see a collective sag in their shoulders once the Yankees scored against Keuchel, and it was reflected in their at-bats.

One talent evaluator at the game went so far as to call them “non-competitive” at the plate.

“Tanaka was good,” the evaluator said, “but the Astros had some really bad at-bats against him. You want to see a better approach, more fight in a game like this.”

Going home should help the Astros, of course, but you can’t help thinking they’re playing tight. After all, the best offensive team in the American League this season has scored only nine runs in five games in this series.

Even Jose Altuve, who looked like he might never make an out during the two games in Houston, has gone cold, going 0-for-10 here in the Bronx.

As such Astros’ manager A.J. Hinch all but admitted his hitters have looked as if the moment has been too big for them.

“It’s rare,” he said of his team’s offensive struggles, “because of how much offense we put up through the season and even in the Division Series.

“(But) the playoffs, with advanced scouting and exposing weaknesses… if they get you to crack a little bit outside of your game plan then they’ve got you. We haven’t stayed in our game plan quite well enough to make adjustments.

“Getting pull-happy against Tanaka hurt us. And as the game went on you could feel the game sort of shortening. And as they separated it made it difficult for us to come back.” hat’s a pretty candid answer, and to some extent it speaks to the pressure the Yankee bullpen puts on teams to score early, but mostly it sounded like the Astros, in his words, are cracking a bit under the pressure.

The Yankees, meanwhile, couldn’t be riding any higher after finally defeating their tormentor, Keuchel, and they look like a team that is again ready to seize the moment against a reeling opponent.

They did it in Cleveland. No reason to think they won’t do it in Houston as well.

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