There’s been too much going on to not bring the Off Day Dreaming blog from the regular season back for the postseason. The Yankees are resting for the second straight day, while the Astros and Rays are in Houston preparing for Game 5 on Thursday. It’s never felt so good to not have Yankees baseball for so long.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. I don’t want Aaron Hicks to return to the team. Not that he’s necessarily going to because him saying he’s ready to go and him actually being deemed ready to go by the Yankees are two very different things, but the Yankees don’t need him and I don’t want him.

Hicks only played in 59 games this year, hasn’t played since August 3 and wasn’t good when he played. He batted .235/.325/.443 in his limited time with 12 home runs and 36 RBIs, and while the home runs translate to a 33-home run season over 162 games, that’s not all that impressive given the state of the baseball and home run totals around the league. And projecting numbers for Hicks out over 162 games, as if he would ever play a full season is funny.

Even if Hicks were to return and have only a reserve role on the team, it would likely mean Cameron Maybin would lose his postseason roster spot. Maybin deserves to be a part of this time now after earning it throughout the regular season, and he’s a better option for a role off the bench, which he most recently displayed in Game 3 with his ninth-inning home run to give the Yankees a much-needed insurance run.

Unfortunately, this is a lost season for Hicks, in what was another season in which he got hurt multiple times and failed to stay on the field. The Yankees don’t need him and they don’t have a place for a player who hasn’t played in more than two months.

2. There’s this idea it’s unwise to want to pick your opponent in the postseason, but I disagree. If given the choice before the ALDS, I’m sure the Yankees would have rather faced the team with no starting pitching in the Twins than the Astros or Rays, and when it comes to the ALCS, there’s no chance the Yankees would rather face the Astros over the Rays. A matchup against the Rays means home-field advantage for the series, a shorter flight for Games 3, 4 and 5 and the chance to play in a familiar setting where the majority of the crowd will be Yankees fans.

If you want the Yankees to face the Astros or if you’re not rooting for the Rays to win Game 5 because you don’t want to root for a division rival or because you think picking your postseason opponent has negative repercussions, take a lap.

3. Even if the Rays lose Game 5 of the ALDS to the Astros on Thursday night, they have already done more than enough to help the Yankees for the ALCS. Justin Verlander starting Game 4 of the ALDS means the earliest he can pitch in the ALCS is Game 2, and Gerrit Cole having to start Game 5 of the ALDS means the earliest he can pitch in the ALCS is Game 3. Instead of the Yankees getting Verlander in Game 1 and Cole in Game 2 in Houston (where the duo is nearly unbeatable) they would get Verlander in Game 2 in Houston and Cole in Game 3 in New York. And after seeing Cole get knocked around in Boston in the 2018 ALDS, he’s far from a sure-thing away from his home of MinuteMaid Park.

The Astros having to go the distance against the Rays means their rotation would look something like this in the ALCS:

Game 1: Zack Greinke
Game 2: Justin Verlander
Game 3: Gerrit Cole
Game 4: Wade Miley
Game 5: Zack Greinke
Game 6: Justin Verlander
Game 7: Gerrit Cole

4. If the Rays are to pull off the historic upset and eliminate the Astros in Game 5, then things get even more advantageous for the Yankees. The Yankees would then have home-field advantage for the ALCS and would play Games 1 and 2 in New York on Saturday and Sunday rather than Games 3, 4 and 5 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That means a more raucous Stadium crowd with all day to pregame and no work obligations either day.

It also means the Yankees would face the overall lesser opponent, who they went 12-7 against in the regular season with two of the losses coming in the last week of the season when the Yankees had nothing to play for (and provided the lineups to prove it) and the Rays had everything to play for.

It’s hard to predict the Rays’ rotation if they advance to the ALCS because it’s hard to know if Charlie Morton or Blake Snell will need to come out of the bullpen in Game 5 in relief of Tyler Glasnow. But let’s say the Rays stick to their expected rotation and Morton and Snell go in turn, this is what the Rays’ ALCS rotation would look like:

Game 1: Blake Snell
Game 2: Charlie Morton
Game 3: Tyler Glasnow
Game 4: Opener
Game 5: Blake Snell
Game 6: Charlie Morton
Game 7: Tyler Glasnow

The Yankees would get Snell and Morton in New York where neither has had success.

Snell has been a disaster at the Stadium in his career, pitching to a 5.82 ERA, 1.616 WHIP and allowing nine home runs in 43 1/3 innings over 11 starts. He’s fared much better against the Yankees at Tropicana Field, but if the Rays use this rotation, he will only face the Yankees once at home, and the series might be over before he even gets to.

Morton has been a dominant postseason pitcher, and handled the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS (5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K), but in Game 3 of that series, he was removed in the fourth inning after getting rocked (3.2 IP, 6 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 HR) at the Stadium. This season he shut the Yankees down over two starts at Tropicana Field, but couldn’t get anyone out in two starts at the Stadium.

Tropicana Field: 11.2 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 0.77 ERA, 0.857 WHIP
Yankee Stadium: 9.2 IP, 9 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 8 BB, 10 K, 3 HR, 7.45 ERA, 1.758 WHIP

With this rotation, Morton would only face the Yankees in New York, where he’s been Pirates Charlie Morton and not Astros/Rays Charlie Morton.

5. Even going back to the beginning of the season, I have always been against CC Sabathia getting a postseason start, and there’s no chance of it happening now, which is great. But being on the roster and pitching out of the bullpen? That’s a different story.

Aaron Boone managed himself into a pretzel in Game 3 when he used Tommy Kahnle, Adam Ottavino and Chad Green in the fifth inning. Thankfully, the Yankees were able to win the game by only using their elite relievers and it never truly came back to hurt the team or ruin the series. But because of his dangerous decisions, Tyler Lyons was warming up at one point. The same Tyler Lyons the Yankees signed in August after he was released by the Pirates and who gave up three home runs in 8 1/3 innings for the Yankees in the regular season. The only reason Lyons is on the roster is because both Sabathia and Dellin Betances are hurt.

I would have felt much more comfortable had Sabathia (even on one knee and with a bad shoulder) been warming up instead of Lyons. And moving forward, I hope Sabathia is healthy enough to be on the active roster, so that it will be him instead of Lyons warming up when Boone inevitably mismanages the bullpen.

6. I think it’s beyond silly to bat Brett Gardner third in the lineup and have him bat ahead of Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres and Gary Sanchez, but the Yankees feel it’s necessary to break up the right-handed bats (the same way they feel it’s necessary to give their players scheduled days off to prevent injuries), so they’re going to have a left-handed bat there against right-handed starters. Because of that and because the team is undefeated in the postseason with that lineup, you can expect to continue to see it in the ALCS against right-handed starters.

The right-handed starters the Yankees will see in the ALCS are either Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke, or Charlie Morton, Tyler Glasnow and probably opener Diego Castillo. Against left-handed pitching, Gardner would most likely slide down to the bottom of the order, and the Yankees would place Gio Urshela between Gardner and Didi Gregorius. That would give the Yankees a lineup looking something like this:

DJ LeMahieu, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Edwin Encarnacion, DH
Giancarlo Stanton, LF
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Gary Sanchez, C
Didi Gregorius, SS
Gio Urshela, 3B
Brett Gardner, CF

Now that’s a lineup. That’s the lineup the Yankees would use against Wade Miley and Blake Snell. I think it’s the lineup they should use every game.

7. Ottavino was used oddly in Game 3 of the ALDS, facing only Nelson Cruz before being removed for another right-handed pitcher in Green to face a left-handed hitter. It’s clear Boone is being told by the analytics department to not allow Ottavino to face left-handed batters, and that won’t be a problem if the Yankees face the Astros. Ottavino will have his work cut out for him with anticipated matchups against George Springer, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Correa, so while it was head-scratching to see Ottavino used in a limited role against the Twins, you can expect to see a lot of him against the Astros.

If it’s the Rays who advance, Ottavino’s role will be less prominent as the Rays have a much more balanced lineup, but even then, their left-handed bats are nowhere near as fearsome as the left-handed bats of the Twins or Astros. Either way, expect to see more Ottavino in the next round, and expect to see a lot of him if the Yankees play the Astros.

8. Aside from sweeping the division series and getting a four-day, complete-day layoff before the ALCS, the best part about the ALDS was that everyone in the lineup contributed.

LeMahieu hit two doubles, a home run and had four RBIs. Judge reached base in seven of his 13 plate appearances. Gardner homered in Game 1 and drove in the huge second run in Game 3. Encarnacion went 4-for-13 with two doubles and two RBIs. Stanton reached base in five of his 11 plate appearances. Torres gave the Yankees the lead in Games 1 and 3, had three doubles, a home run, four RBIs, two stolen bases and a 1.378 OPS and was the ALDS MVP. Sanchez reached base in five of his 12 plate appearances and saw 28 pitches in Game 3.Gregorius had the grand slam in Game 2, drove in two insurance runs in Game 3 and led the team with 6 RBIs in the series. Urshela had three hits, including a double.

When the worst hitter on your team in a series is your 9-hitter (Urshela here), which is supposed to be your worst hitter, and even he goes 3-for-12 with a double in the series, you know things are going well. When you score 23 runs in three games despite not getting a home run from Judge, Encarnacion, Stanton or Sanchez, well, that’s just scary.

Too many times since 2001 have the Yankees lost postseason series because the entire team or nearly the entire team is cold at the same time. I don’t expect the Yankees to have the kind of three-game offensive outburst they had in the ALDS in the ALCS or the World Series if they make it that far, but getting production and timely hits from different players each game, like they did in the ALDS, is what wins in October.

9. Odds are the Yankees will stay with their ALDS rotation in the ALCS, but there are a few things for them to think about depending on which team wins.

If the Rays win, I think it’s a guarantee we see the same rotation order in the ALCS, setting up this rotation:

Game 1: James Paxton
Game 2: Masahiro Tanaka
Game 3: Luis Severino
Game 4: Opener/J.A. Happ
Game 5: James Paxton
Game 6: Masahiro Tanaka
Game 7: Luis Severino

That would allow both Paxton and Tanaka to pitch at home in Games 1 and 2 and would bring Tanaka back at home in Game 6, where’s he much better than on he is on the road.

If the Astros win, things could change. Paxton, despite being a left-hander against the Astros’ right-handed heavy lineup of Springer, Altuve, Bregman, Gurriel and Correa has dominated the Astros in his career, winning all four of his starts against them in 2018 as a Mariner. I wouldn’t feel great about having a lefty opening the series on the road against that right-handed lineup, but I still think he would be the Yankees’ Game 1 choice, even though he pitched the worst of three starters in the ALDS.

I think the Yankees might flip Tanaka and Severino if they have to play the Astros. Tanaka did pitch well in Game 1 in Houston in the 2017 ALCS, and Severino did OK in Game 2 of that series, but it’s clear the Yankees would rather have Tanaka start at home than on the road this postseason. If the Yankees were to leave Paxton and flip Tanaka and Severino, the rotation would look like this:

Game 1: James Paxton
Game 2: Luis Severino
Game 3: Masahiro Tanaka
Game 4: Opener/J.A. Happ
Game 5: James Paxton
Game 6: Luis Severino
Game 7: Masahiro Tanaka

The Yankees have a lot to think about when it comes to their rotation, and I’m sure they already know what they will do depending on which team wins the other series, but at least they will get to line up their rotation on their terms after sweeping their division series.

10. I needed this four-day layoff as much as the Yankees after spending Friday and Saturday at the Stadium and then having the stressful Game 3 on Tuesday. It’s nice to sit back and enjoy the other series and not have to worry about a winner-take-all game like Astros, Rays, Dodgers, Nationals, Braves and Cardinals fans have to worry about on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Yankees might not have won home-field advantage for the American League postseason in the regular season, but they are one Rays win from getting it, and they are now in a much better position to face the Astros if the Astros win.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

This is it: the Yankees’ final off day of the 2019 regular season. The Yankees have three games remaining and then it’s the postseason. Growing up, this time of year was always a given as a Yankees fan, and for the third year in a row, it’s back to being a given.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The goal of being the 1-seed and having home-field advantage for the American League playoffs won’t be accomplished. The Yankees trail the Astros by three games in the loss column, which means four games overall for the 1-seed, and with the Yankees only having three games left, the Yankees will be the 2-seed in the AL. The Yankees also now trail the Dodgers by a 1/2 game for home-field in a potential World Series.

It’s still possible the Yankees could have home-field for both the ALCS and World Series. The Astros could get upset in the ALDS by the Rays, A’s or Indians (I wouldn’t count on it) and the Yankees could either finish with a better record than the Dodgers, or the Dodgers could get upset as well. But if the Yankees advance to the ALCS, plan on them playing the Astros.

I wanted the Yankees to have home-field in the event they reach the ALCS and play the Astros because I think they need it to win. The 2017 ALCS was completely lopsided in favor of the home team, the Astros have the best home record in baseball this season (60-21) and Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole have been nearly unhittable in Houston, though they have been nearly unhittable everywhere. The Yankees have had success against this Astros core in New York, and it was these Astros who admitted to being intimidated by the Yankee Stadium crowd in the postseason. The Yankees can beat the Astros, but it would have been easier to do so with the first two games, and four of the seven games of the ALCS at home.

Now the Yankees are either going to need to have an unlikely upset in the other ALDS or do something they have a lot of trouble doing in Houston: hitting, scoring and winning.

2. I’m scared of Verlander in the postseason, but I’m just as scared of Cole, who has better strikeouts numbers than Verlander, and who the Yankees have seen a lot less of in recent years.

I stayed up on Wednesday night to watch the Astros-Mariners game (because I had an Astros-A’s two-team parlay), and during the broadcast, there was a graphic shown about Cole and how for more than four months now he is first in every single pitching category in the league.

Cole was originally drafted by the Yankees, but chose to attend UCLA instead, and was later redrafted by the Pirates. The Yankees unsuccessfully tried to trade for him before the 2018 season, but the Astros landed him, and he helped lead them to the ALCS, before laying an egg, which helped the Red Sox advance to and win the World Series.

I can’t help but envision Cole shutting down the Yankees in the ALCS the way he was unable to shut down the Red Sox last season, and then watching the Yankees greatly overpay to sign him in the offseason only to have him come to New York and be more like the pitcher the Pirates dealt than the one the Astros acquired. That seems like something that would happen. Then again, the Yankees probably won’t sign him in the offseason, opting to once again shop from the starting pitching clearance rack.

3. The type of game we saw from the Yankees on Wednesday night against Charlie Morton and the Rays is the exact type of game that keeps me up at night for fear of it happening in the postseason. The Yankees’ right-handed heavy lineup (missing two more right-handed hitters in Gary Sanchez and Edwin Encarnacion) was completely shut down by Morton for six innings and the Rays’ bullpen for the final three. The Yankees were one-hit in the game and managed to score only one run in the 21 innings in the two-game series. For now, I’m going to chalk it up as just two games of 162 at a time when the Yankees are just trying to go through the motions and stay healthy against a team with everything to play for still.

Morton has owned the Yankees away from Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees have owned him in New York (like they did in Game 3 of the 2017 ALCS), only further proving how much better the Yankees are at home than on the road. Wednesday night’s game was essentially a duplicate performance of Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS for Morton. In that game, Morton shut out the Yankees for five innings, only allowing two hits, before Lance McCullers Jr. came in and threw 100 straight curveballs to finish the game. 

The Yankees and Yankees fans should be extremely grateful Morton is no longer on the Astros. Outside of Verlander and Cole, he’s been arguably the best pitcher in the AL. It’s bad enough the Astros’ third starter is Zack Greinke, but if it were still Morton, the Yankees could pack up the bats and balls and try again next season.

4. It’s hard to put a lot of stock into how badly the Yankees have played recently, and they have played badly, going 7-7 since their unnecessary bullpen management loss in Detroit back on September 10, because they haven’t been using their best possible lineup and have been avoiding using their elite relievers.

I’m not worried about the team playing poorly at the end of the regular season because nothing that has happened this month and nothing that will happen in the last three games of the season this weekend will matter come next Friday night at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees could be on a 15-game winning streak or 15-game losing streak heading into October and it wouldn’t matter, and the team’s lack of hitting this week against the Rays, doesn’t worry me. I have long been worried about the offense disappearing in the postseason like it did in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS, and the last two games didn’t change that.

5. With each game the Yankees use a lineup that features Brett Gardner and Didi Gregorius breaking up the right-handed bats, the more nervous I get about this sort of lineup being used in the postseason. I don’t know who actually creates the lineup, and I highly doubt it’s Aaron Boone, but whoever it is, Gardner and Gregorius can’t be hitting anywhere other than the bottom third of the lineup. This isn’t the 2017 postseason when the Yankees had Jacoby Ellsbury, Chase Headley and Starlin Castro to hide. The lineup is too good, whether it’s right-handed heavy or not, to have those two batting anywhere higher than seventh.

If Gardner and Gregorius bat where they should, here’s a lineup I think we could see.

1. DJ LeMahieu, 1B
2. Aaron Judge, RF
3. Gleyber Torres, 2B
4. Giancarlo Stanton, LF
5. Edwin Encarnacion, DH
6. Gary Sanchez, C
7. Didi Gregorius, SS
8. Gio Urshela, 3B
9. Brett Gardner, CF

I don’t agree with Stanton batting ahead of Encarnacion or Sanchez, but the Yankees are going to hit Stanton at least fourth and possibly even third. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Gregorius bats ahead of Sanchez because the Yankees desperately like to hit inferior hitters ahead of superior hitters whenever they can.

6. This lineup doesn’t include Luke Voit, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to play. Between Voit, Encarnacion and Urshela, two of the three will play. I think you need Urshela in the lineup, not only because he’s earned it, but because he’s been so good at third base, that even if he were to stay in his current slump in October, his glove is enough to keep him in the lineup. That leaves the final lineup between Voit and Encarnacion.

Encarnacion will return to the lineup this weekend in Texas and try to get as many at-bats as he can in the three-game series (though I’m sure the Yankees won’t let him play in all three games) to get ready for the postseason. As long he shows he’s healthy, he’s going to play.

Voit, on the other hand, claims he’s healthy and over the hernia injury that landed him on the injured list twice, but he hasn’t hit since returning nearly a month ago. Voit is batting just .222/.341/.375 over 85 plate appearances with two home runs since the end of August and has looked overmatched most of the time. He still has a .383 on-base percentage and an .856 OPS on the season, but you have to go back to the end of July to find the last time he was truly a feared, middle-of-the-order presence. If Encarnacion is healthy, Voit is on the bench to begin the postseason.

7. It can be worrisome to be the 1-seed and have had nothing to play for in weeks and suddenly be playing a postseason game against a team that has been in Game 7 mode for as long as you have been coasting. The Twins are a lot like the Yankees in that they have known for a while they are going to the postseason, even if they didn’t officially clinch the AL Central until Wednesday. Now the Twins can sit back and relax, like the Yankees have been doing, and play spring training lineups and wait for next Friday.

Despite not being the 1-seed and not having home-field advantage no matter what and not getting to face the wild-card winner who will have had to play an extra game and burn their best starter to get to the ALDS, I think the Yankees ended up with the best possible first-round matchup.

I’m not scared of the Twins. Not at all. This doesn’t have to do with the Yankees historically owning the Twins and eliminating them in five postseasons since 2003. This has everything to do with the Twins having the weakest starting pitching in the AL postseason field. If the Yankees were to lose to them, it wouldn’t just be an upset, it would be an absolute disaster. The Yankees would claim it’s the result of a short series and small sample size and the MLB postseason being a crapshoot, but it can’t happen. The Yankees can’t lose in the ALDS.

8. The best chance the Yankees have of not seeing the Astros in a potential ALCS is if the A’s win the wild-card game. The Astros would steamroll both the Rays and Indians, but I could see an A’s upset of the Astros, and from a gambling perspective, there would be a lot of value in taking the A’s series money line.

The A’s took three of four from the Astros in Houston two weeks ago and have won six of the last eight against them. The two teams know each other the same way the Yankees and Red Sox do, and there wouldn’t be any surprises in a series between them.

A series which wouldn’t have been allowed prior to the five-team postseason format is the last thing the Astros want after earning the 1-seed. It’s the only real ALDS matchup which could end the Astros’ season early or at least screw up the order of their rotation for the ALCS.

9. The Yankees are going to finish the season with either 102, 103, 104 or 105 wins depending on how the weekend in Texas goes in what will also be the last three games ever at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

It’s been a fun six months and an enjoyable season, the third in a row, after the previous three out of four were miserable. But now the real season begins. Everything since March 29 has been to prepare for next Friday night in the Bronx and Game 1 of the ALDS, and if the season doesn’t end the way the last nine have failed to, nothing since March 29 will have mattered.

10. This was the 19th and final Off Day Dreaming of the regular season. There will be a similar blog after each postseason game this October as there has been in past postseasons.

Thank you for reading Off Day Dreaming throughout the regular season on the worst days of any Yankees season: off days. The next regular-season Off Day Dreaming will be on Friday, March 27, 2020.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

It’s the last week of the regular season. The last week! There are only five regular-season games remaining for the 2019 Yankees and then next Friday night they will open the postseason at Yankee Stadium.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The Yankees announced the upcoming end-of-the-season rotation and it goes James Paxton followed by Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka, which means that will be the order of starters in the ALDS. I recently wrote in the last edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Power Rankings that I wanted it to go Severino then Paxton then Tanaka, but I’m fine with the way they set it up.

It does worry me that everyone seems to have forgotten the Paxton we saw in March, April, May, June and July and seems to think the one we have seen in August and September is guaranteed to show up in Game 1. Those same people are likely the ones who think Severino can’t be trusted in Game 1 because he has only pitched nine innings this season, which to me, makes him more trustworthy. It’s essentially the end of spring training or the beginning of the season for Severino, and he’s not tired from a season’s worth of work. Look at how dominant he has been early in the season the last couple years and that’s the Severino we’re getting now. But with this setup, Severino is either going to have a chance to put the Yankees up 2-0 in the ALDS or avoid them going down 0-2 before leaving New York. Joe Torre always said he wanted his best pitcher in Game 2 and that’s why Andy Pettitte — the winningest pitcher in postseason history — would pitch that game. The Yankees have their best pitcher going in Game 2.

2. After the first edition of the Yankees’ Postseason Power Rankings, James Paxton went out and got rocked by the Red Sox (4 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 4 HR) and his ERA rose to 4.72 on the season. But since getting embarrassed in Boston, Paxton hasn’t lost, winning 10 straight for an undefeated August and September after the Yankees lost all five of his July starts.

Over this nine-game winning streak, opposing hitters are batting .167/.241/.273 against Paxton as he’s beaten the Red Sox twice, Indians and Dodgers along with the pesky offenses of the Rangers and Blue Jays twice. He’s looked like the pitcher I thought the Yankees traded for and not the pitcher who gave them four-plus months of mediocrity to begin the season.

In the first edition of the rankings, after he struggled through the first four months of the season, I wrote: He has two months to change my mind, and he has a lot to do in those two months to change it. Well, he’s changed it.

Earlier this season, YES showed an interview of Paxton talking about how he wants to be a Yankee and wants to pitch where he’s expected to win. He will now get that chance at the end of next week in Game 1 of the ALDS.

3. I really missed Severino this season and his return has made me realize how much I love everything about him. I love his demeanor and pace, his velocity and control, his command and attack of the strike zone. He throws a pitch the ball, gets the ball back and is immediately ready to throw the next pitch. He doesn’t waste time and puts each batter on defense for the entire at-bat. He’s a refreshing presence on the mound, and as close to a guaranteed win as you can get every five days for the Yankees.

In two starts this season, Severino has been dominant (9 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 13 K) and I would have trusted him starting a postseason game without these two performances, but now I trust him more than anyone.

Severino’s 2017 wild-card game disaster came in his first postseason start after throwing a career-high 193 1/3 innings. He bounced back to pitch well in that ALDS and ALCS and again in the 2018 wild-card game before the 2018 ALDS Game 3 disaster, in which he was late to warmup for reasons we will never know. But Severino has yet to really deliver that memorable postseason performance, and it’s likely because in both postseasons he has been a part of, he was coming off six months of career-high work. This time he will be the most rested and freshest starter of the entire postseason field, and has the chance to be the Yankees’ difference-maker in potential series against the Astros and Dodgers.

4. I like Tanaka getting the ball in Game 3. He won’t be scared into melting down on the road and he won’t let the crowd or non-Yankee Stadium mound affect him. He’s proven himself on the road in October with strong starts against the eventual champions in each of the last two seasons. In the hostile postseason environments of Houston (6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K) and Boston (5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), Tanaka delivered, and I trust him in Game 3 of the ALDS to either finish a potential sweep of the series, swing the series in the Yankees’ favor or save the season (like he did in Game 3 of the 2017 ALDS).

5. It seems like the Yankees are going to give the ball to J.A. Happ in Game 4 of the ALDS rather than go with an opener and I really hope they don’t. If Paxton is getting the ball in Game 1 because of what he did this season then there’s no way Happ should get the ball for a postseason game because of what he did this season. I don’t think Happ or CC Sabathia should be starting a playoff game based on their regular-season performances and not counting their postseason starts in the 2018 ALDS which were as bad as possible. Let Chad Green open Game 4 and piece together the remaining 21-24 outs. Don’t let Happ ruin a postseason game in the first inning.

6. I’m scared of three things in the postseason. One of them is the offense disappearing with an abundance of strikeouts, which is what happened in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Games 3 and 4 of the 2018 ALDS. That can’t be planned for or prevented and all you can do is pray a slump doesn’t occur at the worst possible time in a short. The other two can be planned for or prevented …

7. Didi Gregorius has no business batting third or fourth and Brett Gardner has no business batting anywhere other than ninth in the postseason. I don’t care that they bat left-handed and that they could be used to break up the right-handed bats. They will be the two weakest bats in the postseason lineup and they belong at the bottom of the order.

The Yankees constructed a right-handed heavy lineup, and they have to live with that. There’s no reason to bat either of them ahead of anyone on the Yankees, especially when the lineup is in some order made up of DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton, Luke Voit, Edwin Encarnacion and Gio Urshela. Gregorius eighth and Gardner ninth. Don’t build your lineup for some late-innings relief strategy which might not and most likely won’t happen.

8. The other thing which can be prevented is Aaron Boone’s managing. It’s great that the team has won 100-plus games in the first two seasons as manager, but none of it will matter this season like it didn’t last season if he manages this October like he did last October.

There’s no point of needing only 12 outs from your starting pitcher if your manager isn’t going to pull the starting pitcher at the right time and utilize the bullpen in the order it’s meant to be utilized. Boone ruined the ALDS last season when he left Severino in too long in Game 3 and Sabathia in Game 4. He then doubled-down on his egregious decisions to leave both starters in too long with the relievers he brought in to follow them.

I’m most scared of the Astros’ deep lineup and starting pitching and it will be the Yankees’ biggest obstacle to winning a championship this season. But after that, I’m scared of Boone managing the Yankees out of the playoffs. Until he shows he’s learned from his mistakes and is a capable postseason manager, it’s hard to think otherwise.

9. It seems like Yankees fans suddenly started caring about home-field advantage in the postseason after the Yankees clinched the division. They should have been worried about it all along. The division has never been a problem. I wrote back on July 1 that the Yankees clinched the division, following the two games in London. Even if it took them another two-and-a-half months to make it official, they were always going to win the division. Home-field has been the bigger issue these last two-plus months, and now it’s no longer an issue since the Astros are going to win it.

The Astros have a 1 1/2-game lead over the Yankees for home-field because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, and with only five games left to play for the Yankees, even if they won them all, they still might not win it. And it’s going to be hard to win them all since they said the Goof Troop of 40-man relievers would be doing the pitching in the two-game series in Tampa this week.

So if the Yankees and Astros meet in the ALCS, the first two games of the series will be in Houston as the Astros will get four of the seven games at home. The Yankees will have to figure out a way to beat Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole or Zack Greinke on the road, and also take care of business at home. Yankees fans will want to root as hard as they are for the Yankees in the postseason for the wild-card winner to win the other ALDS matchup.

10. My expected record for the Yankees in September is 15-10. They are currently 13-7, which means they have to finish at least 2-3 to meet expectations.

The Yankees have 102 wins and only need to win one of their remaining games to match the 2009 Yankees’ 103-59 record. But if the postseason doesn’t end with a win like it did for the 2009 Yankees, it won’t matter.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!