By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/19/are-the-yankees-overstaying-their-welcome/This was not in the Astros’ plans. Weren’t their starting pitchers, fortified by Justin Verlander’s
arrival, supposed to keep these Yankees in check even when the American League Championship
Series moved to the south Bronx? Enough that even their rickety bullpen could keep the Baby
Bombers in their cribs?
They’re probably thinking now that it’s a bloody good thing they have a) the series home field
advantage, and b) Verlander to pitch Game Six back in Houston. They’re probably also hoping
Lance McCullers is willing to take the ball on somewhat short rest in a Game Seven if there is
a Game Seven.
Because even Verlander now doesn’t look like any kind of lock to elude the Yankees. And he
only pitched the postseason’s no-questions-asked masterwork in Game Two. The Baby Bombers’
bats came back to life in New York. The question of whether they fall back asleep in Houston
is yet to be answered, but nobody’s willing to bet against them just yet.
Forget that the Astros had a .634 winning percentage on the road this season. Even allowing
the Yankees as the American League’s best home team this season, the Astros played like
anything but one of the league’s top two road teams when they hit Yankee Stadium. The Yankees
now have to prove they’re better than their on-the-season .494 road percentage.
And they have at least one distinct advantage. They lead the ALCS 3-2 after what they did to
Dallas Keuchel Wednesday afternoon, shutting him and the Astros out, 5-0.
Keuchel smothered them with ten punchouts in seven four-hit, no-run Game One innings. The
Yankees probably figured they weren’t going to bludgeon him even on an off day for the stout
lefthander. So, in what seems like the new Yankee textbook’s Astros chapter, they simply pecked
away at him and scratched four runs off his hide.
They finally chased him in the fifth when Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius rapped back-to-back,
two-out RBI singles. Keuchel’s cause wasn’t helped when third baseman Alex Bregman threw
Chase Headley’s one-out single past first base, allowing Headley to second, from which he scored
on Sanchez’s hit after Aaron Judge walked on a full count.
Judge didn’t hit anything over the fence in Game Five but he didn’t have to, for a change. He
also whacked a Keuchel cutter for an RBI double with one out in the third. The Judge’s Chambers
in Yankee Stadium acted as though he’d hit a six-run homer, anyway.
Bank on it. Astros manager A.J. Hinch might well have lifted Keuchel at the first sign of trouble
in the fifth if he didn’t think his bullpen had suddenly taken arson lessons.
The Yankees’ pitchers have had no such issues since leaving Houston behind for the New York
leg. They got a virtuoso Game Three start out of CC Sabathia. They got better than they could
have asked for from Sonny Gray in Game Four. They got the same thing out of Masahiro Tanaka
in Game Five that they got from him in Game One—except that, this time, there was no pair
of RBI singles to spoil his fun.
And they got their bullpen bulls surrendering only three earned runs over Three through Five.
They even gave Aroldis Chapman a break in Game Five, letting Tommy Kahnle pitch the final
two innings to close out the shutout.
Nobody thought the Astros’ potent enough lineup would prove this futile all of a sudden, either.
”Can I not talk about the good pitching? Because that’s what it’s all about,” said Hinch after Game
Five. “It’s hard in this league when you run into good pitching, especially as precise as the
advance scouting gets in the postseason. These teams don’t get here by accident.”
Not that he’s all that worried going back to Houston. “For us,” he said, “we’re an explosive
offense that is one click away from having that 10-, 12-, 14- or 18-hit attack.”
Keep dreaming, the Yankees have to want to say, to the Astros and maybe to themselves,
too. Because the Yankees have the same kind of capability.
Yankee first baseman Greg Bird doesn’t mind talking about the pitching, especially his own.
“They kind of got overlooked those first few games because we lost, but they’ve pitched
great,” he said of the Yankee starters. ”If they give us a chance, we can do some damage.
They’re confident in us playing behind them, and we’re confident in them.”
They have reason to be. Ever since Francisco Lindor ruined them in Progressive Field with
the grand slam that followed Joe Girardi’s non-review call on Lonnie Chisenhall’s non-hit-by-
a-pitch, the Yankees’ starting pitchers have posted a 1.75 ERA and a 0.80 walks/hits per
inning pitched rate overall.
Tanaka’s virtuosity against Keuchel in Game Five put him into some distinguished company:
he became only the third Yankee pitcher to log two starts of seven or more shutout innings
in the same postseason. The other two? Whitey Ford and Roger Clemens.
If Luis Severino can’t prevail against Verlander in Game Six, the Yankees aren’t exactly ready
to reach for the whiskey. They’ll have Sabathia for Game Seven, likely against Charlie Morton,
though it's worth repeating the Astros may hope McCullers can step up on short rest for it.
And ever since remaking himself into a pitcher who leans heavily and often on newly-retooled
sliders and curve balls, Sabathia has been a tough proposition in ways even he never envisioned
in his younger, power pitching days.
This is slightly unfamiliar territory for this year’s Astros. They’re not used to going home behind.
They certainly didn’t think they’d go to New York with a 2-0 lead and get flattened like a street
rat on an IRT track three times in Yankee Stadium.
But Carlos Beltran, the veteran doing his second postseason tour of duty with the Astros, wasn’t
about to let his guys leave New York with their tails between their legs. He buttonholed his
mates in a very quiet postgame clubhouse and spoke up.
“Sometimes people get a tendency of getting down, and our job is to encourage everyone to turn
the page and move on and take the challenge,” he said of his pep talk. ”At the end of the day,
like it’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. Even though you would love to leave this place [leading]
3-2, now it’s our time to try to do the same thing the Yankees did to us here.”
Remember: These Astros also shook off regular-season injuries that kept Keuchel, McCullers,
and Carlos Correa. They also picked themselves and half a state up in the immediate aftermath
of an adversary named Harvey.
“We’ll be ready,” insisted catcher Brian McCann, himself a former Yankee. “This team, we’ve played
extremely well all season long, and nothing’s going to change. We’ll be ready for Game Six. We’ve
responded all year long.”
But so have the Yankees, who weren’t even supposed to be in the postseason at all, never mind
on the threshold of the World Series. Weren’t the Baby Bombers looking good, better, coming into
their own, but still a realistic year or year and a half away from just getting to the dance?
“They’re ready,” says third baseman Todd Frazier, one of the veteran pickups who helped make
things simpler for the new-ish kids on the Yankee block. “This is the spotlight for them, and I think
they’ve changed a lot of minds. And you’re seeing what they can do.”
The Astros hope they’ve seen enough of what these Yankees can do. They love their chances
behind Verlander in Game Six. But as Joaquin Andujar, the late pitcher/time bomb/flake once
observed, “In baseball, there’s just one word—you never know.”
Nobody needs to remind anyone that both these teams, in their own ways, are irrefutable
evidence. But these Astros—heading toward an absolute-
must-win Game Six—would love to
tell these Yankees that they and their Baby Bombers have overstayed their welcome.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Polly Ticks @Machiavelli @DCPatriot @dfwgator @Mom MD@musiclady@Cyber Liberty@Slip18@GrouchoTex@Bigun@flowers
