Finishing off playoff nemesis top priority

IMAGINE a universe in which Ellis Kinder outpitched Vic Raschi on the final day of the 1949 season, Mike Torrez struck out Bucky Dent in the playoff game at Fenway in 1978 and Grady Little pulled Pedro Martinez with a 5-2 lead after seven innings of work in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. You’re living in it. The Curse of the Bambino has been wiped off the face of the earth just like the ancient island of Atlantis. If you couldn’t look it up, as Casey Stengel would have advised, then New York’s historic dominance over Boston following the sale of Babe Ruth the day after Christmas in 1919 would be regarded as fable to this generation subsisting in a time of Red Sox rule. For it is Boston that wins World Series, not the Yankees. It is Boston that seems to play with the veneer of arrogant confidence that once was patented by its blood rivals. It all changed, didn’t it, the moment Dave Roberts stole second base in the ninth inning of Game 4 in 2004? Since then, the Red Sox have won four World Series to the Yankees’ one. Since then, the Red Sox have won 48 playoff games to the Yankees’ 32, plus two wild-card game victories. The divide has grown deeper over the last six seasons, during which Boston has a 2-0 edge in

World Series titles and a 23-7 edge in playoff victories, not counting wild-card games.

So this: Even as the Red Sox sit in third place in the AL East, 10¹/2 games behind the division-leading Yankees and 3¹/2 games out of the second wild-card spot heading into this weekend’s four-game series at the Stadium that opens Friday with an expected James Paxton-Eduardo Rodriguez matchup, isn’t the last thing you’d want a New York-Boston division series?

Isn’t that the last thing the Yankees, who have absorbed some hellacious beatdowns by the Sox, should want, too, even if new-age math acts in their favor?

Because didn’t last week’s 19-3 hearken back to last year’s 16-1 and even to 2004’s 10-3? And even though the Red Sox have been less than themselves in their championship defense, Chris Sale has been less than himself and management was as unsuccessful at the deadline in acquiring reinforcements for a problem bullpen as Brian Cashman was in addressing the besieged and beleaguered rotation, it is going to be on the Yankees to wipe the smile off Boston’s collective face if the teams should hook up in the postseason.

Thus, it would appear incumbent on the Yanks not to allow the Sox to win this series as they did last weekend in taking three out of four in Boston. It is time for Aaron Boone’s team to inflict some damage on its opponent’s playoff chances. In order to do so, it will be necessary not only for the staff to restore some order, but for Aaron Judge to emerge from a deep dive in which he has gone 2-for-27 dating back to his final at-bat in Minnesota on July 24.

Until his leadoff seventh-inning single in Wednesday’s 7-5 victory against Arizona, Judge had struck out 10 times in his previous 15 atbats, including all three prior appearances in that one. He has not hit a home run in 45 at-bats and 52 plate appearances since a sixth-inning blow against Colorado’s Yency Almonte on July 19.

Homer guys have got to homer, especially at home, if the Yankees are going to win.

Once upon a time it was about winning the World Series in The Bronx, not so much about protecting future assets and recording an ongoing string of winning seasons. Baseball has changed on and off the field. It has changed in The Bronx, too, where the Bombers are in the midst of their third-longest Series appearance drought since being dubbed Yankees in 1913 after 10 seasons as the Highlanders.

There was a 15-year gap from 1981-96. There was a 12-year gap from 1964-76. There is this, at nine. And even though Houston stacks up as the team to beat in the AL following Wednesday’s acquisition of Zack Greinke, the team for the Yankees to avoid in October is Boston. They can get a head start on that right now.