Welcome to the best-of-three ALDS. The Yankees and Red Sox split the first two games of the series at Fenway Park — a good outcome for the Yankees, for sure — and now the series shifts to the Bronx for Game Three. It’s very simple: Win two games at home and set up an ALCS rematch against the obnoxiously good Astros.
Since the start of last postseason the Yankees are a perfect 7-0 in Yankee Stadium in the postseason and have outscored their opponents 42-14. 42-14! They’re built for their home ballpark. No doubt. The Yankee Stadium crowd is also the tenth man. The crowd’s been dynamite the last two postseasons and I think it’ll be even louder tonight.
“I think it’s going to be amazing. I really do,” said Aaron Boone yesterday about tonight’s crowd. “I think the connection that our fan base and our fans now have with our players is a special one … I thought the atmosphere against the A’s was special. I think there’s a potential that it could be even more so tomorrow night.”
The Yankees will start Luis Severino tonight and he pitched well in the Wild Card Game, though he only got through four innings plus two batters. Some more length would be nice tonight, but, as far as I’m concerned, the important thing is quality of the innings, not the quantity of the innings. Especially with the bullpen the Yankees have.
If you’re into projections and probabilities and all that, ZiPS has the Yankees as the slight favorite to win the series (53.6% vs. 46.4%) and a slighter favorite to win tonight (51.3% vs. 48.7%). Both these teams are so good, man. It’s hard for me to look at this series as anything other than a coin flip. The lineups:
New York Yankees
1. LF Andrew McCutchen
2. RF Aaron Judge
3. 1B Luke Voit
4. DH Giancarlo Stanton
5. SS Didi Gregorius
6. C Gary Sanchez
7. 3B Miguel Andujar
8. 2B Gleyber Torres
9. CF Brett Gardner
RHP Luis Severino
Boston Red Sox
1. RF Mookie Betts
2. LF Andrew Benintendi
3. DH J.D. Martinez
4. SS Xander Bogaerts
5. 3B Rafael Devers
6. 1B Steve Pearce
7. 2B Brock Holt
8. C Christian Vazquez
9. CF Jackie Bradley Jr.
RHP Nathan Eovaldi
It is cloudy and cool in New York tonight. Has been all day. Not the best baseball weather, but there’s no heavy rain in the forecast, and that’s all that matters. First pitch is scheduled for 7:40pm ET and you can watch on TBS and TBS.com. Enjoy the game.
Injury Update: Aaron Hicks (hamstring) is doing “considerably” better and is available tonight. Aaron Boone said he wanted to give Hicks one more day just because hamstrings are tricky.