With a few help from the one of the old guard, the next generation of Yankees will have a chance to make their mark in the playoffs.
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With the new format in place, the Yankees will play in a winner-take-all wild card showdown on Tuesday night against an opponent that is yet to be determined. The Yankees have established a reputation of overwhelming hitters with an AL-best 8.5 strikeouts per game, making them one of the top five teams in the league.
The New York Yankees are back in the postseason, and Luis Severino is willing to start the AL wild-card game.
The Yankees got on the board first when Carlos Beltran hit an oppo taco from the right-handed batters box that landed two or three rows over the fence to put the Yankees up 1-0 in the second inning.
But before they could get to the Fall Classic, the Yankees had to thank Bucky Dent’s clutch three-run homer that sank the Red Sox’ once-promising season with a single swing of the bat.
NOTES: New York CF Jacoby Ellsbury (sore back) was out of the lineup Thursday.
He became the 29th player to amass 3,000 hits and rose to fourth on the all-time home run list behind Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.
Yankees left-hander C.C. Sabathia came up huge in the clinching game as he won only his second game since the All Star Break to improve to 6-10 on the season.
Players then put on goggles in the clubhouse as they sprayed non-vintage Chandon Brut Classic.
Seriously, is anyone picking this club to win the World Series?
They only missed winning the AL East by three games, but it didn’t matter, as the clutch power hitting of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez led Boston through October. The Yankees had never before failed to finish first in a season in which they led by more than six games. “We had a lot of injuries”. Tim Britton of the Providence Journal notes that the American League East is evidence of the age of parity in baseball and the decline of the superteam – something that offers hope to teams such as the Red Sox in search of rapid changes of fortune. We dealt with a lot of stuff. However, in the six one-game elimination wild card games played since the new format was introduced in 2012, home teams are just 2-4. If CC Sabathia is effective despite an arthritic knee, Masahiro Tanaka avoids Tommy John surgery and Michael Pineda makes 30 starts, this is a playoff team. Tim Hudson allowed three runs and three hits in 21/3 innings in the final start of his 17-year major-league career.
The 23-year-old was supposed to spend most of the year in Triple A refining his work behind the plate, both on the technical side – he’s described as being, at times, stiff in his movements, in a fashion that can impede pitch-framing while also causing balls in the dirt to clang off of him and carom for wild pitches – and perhaps more importantly in his signal-calling.
Sabathia thought back to his late-summer stint on the DL.
It’s been fun, I really don’t know how to react.
But now Sabathia was excited “to be able to pop champagne and exhale for a second”.
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“I think the one thing that tops home-field advantage is health, ” Girardi said.
