I was all for Deivi Garcia starting Game 2 of the ALDS. Sure, it was risky, and sure, it was going against the easy logic of letting Masahiro Tanaka, one of the best postseason pitchers of all time start, but if the Yankees could pull it off and win Game 2 without using Tanaka, they would essentially have the series won. They would have Tanaka on extra rest to close out the Rays in Game 3. That plan I was OK with. What actually transpired with I wasn’t OK with. I don’t think there’s a Yankees fan out there who was OK with it.

As Garcia was battling against Austin Meadows in the top of the first, and also battling against home plate umpire CB Bucknor, who had one of the worst postseason games imaginable calling balls and strikes, J.A. Happ began to warm up in the bullpen. Garcia hadn’t even retired the first Rays batter of the game and Happ was throwing in the Yankees bullpen. I assumed it was protection for Garcia if he were to melt down like Luis Severino in the 2017 wild-card game and unable to give the Yankees anything. Then came the bottom of the second with the game tied at 1, and in came Happ.

Happ wasn’t warming up for protection, he was warming up as part of a set plan and “strategy” by the Yankees. The Yankees had gotten the Rays to build a lineup to face Garcia, inserting many left-handed hitters into it. Now with Happ in the game, the Rays would either have to start removing position players for pinch hitters to get right-left matchups or send left-handed hitters to the plate against the left-handed Happ. The Yankees had decided to try to trick the Rays rather than do what was best for their own team in the second game of a best-of-5 series. The same way the Yankees are always worried about their own lineup construction for late-game situations and scenarios that might never present themselves, the Yankees built their pitching plan for Game 2 based on how the Rays would then have to react.

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Have you ever seen a commercial so bad you can’t understand how a group of executives sat around a conference room table and came up with the idea and how many people had to sign off on it to make the bad idea actually come to fruition? That’s what happened with the Yankees in Game 2. Someone employed by the most prestigious organization in major sports said, “What if we name Garcia as our Game 2 starter, so Kevin Cash puts a lot of left-handed bats into the lineup, and then after the first inning, we go to J.A. Happ to start with a clean inning?” Then everyone including Aaron Boone, Brian Cashman, a bunch of unnamed Ivy league graduates who have tried to prove “being hot” and “hot streaks” and “clutch” don’t exist and baseball lifers who have only ever known playing and working in the game agreed on that plan to the point that it came to fruition.

In theory, you could maybe make the case it’s a sound strategy and a good idea, but in that theory, the left-hander coming out of the bullpen is Clayton Kershaw or Blake Snell or someone with actual ability. Not Happ.

I wrote and talked all season about how bad Happ is, and how untrustworthy he is. I called for the Yankees to stop giving him starts completely after his two disgraceful starts to begin the season, and I begged the Yankees to give Garcia or Clarke Schmidt the opportunity to be part of the rotation. I wrote and said all of this as Happ was struggling to get through four innings in his starts, while he was feuding with the Yankees through the media about them working around his $17 million option for 2021. Happ was miraculously able to put together a string of good starts, but those came against horrible teams who weren’t close to sniffing the playoffs in a season in which 16 of the league’s 30 teams reach the playoffs. This fooled some into thinking Happ had turned back into the pitcher the Yankees traded for at the 2018 deadline. It didn’t fool me.

I have said for weeks Happ couldn’t be a part of the postseason plan. He hasn’t been good enough to start a postseason game since the moment before he threw a pitch to J.D. Martinez in the first inning of Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, which resulted in a three-run home run and ruined that game. Since that inning, Happ has been bad to very bad to being on the brink of being in the majors as a Yankee spanning the entire 2019 regular season, 2019 postseason and 2020 regular season, outside of a few starts when he beat the Orioles, Red Sox and Mets. And now the 2020 postseason can be added to the list as well.

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Happ relieved Garcia and my first thought was This better fucking work. The Yankees were removing a 21-year-old kid completely capable of shutting down the Rays’ lineup for four or five or even six innings to bring in a 37-year-old who was last good enough to pitch in the postseason two calendar years ago. The first batter, the left-handed Joey Wendle, singled. Three batters later the Rays had a 3-1 lead after Mike Zunino hit a home run. After Zunino, the left-handed Meadows walked. Happ was supposed to neutralize the left-handed heavy lineup the Rays had constructed to face Garcia, and he had allowed two of the four left-handed bats he had faced to reach base.

The second inning was bad, but the third inning was the nightmare I had expected with Happ pitching in the postseason. Ji-Man Choi (another left-handed bat) walked with one out, and then Manuel Margot hit a two-run home to straightaway center. The Rays now led 5-1, and Happ had allowed as many runs (four) as outs recorded. The left-handed Wendle came up next and singled off Happ for the second time in as many innings and then Willy Adames reached on an error by Happ himself.

In the top of the fourth, the Yankees closed the deficit to one run after Giancarlo Stanton hit his second home run of the game and his third in as many at-bats to make it a 5-4 game. The Yankees would have five innings and 15 outs to tie the game or take the lead, and Boone was now going to have to actually manage and not just go off the script given to him by that front office idiot who had come up with this plan. Boone’s first decision in what was now a one-run game was to stick with Happ, who put two more on base before Boone finally pulled him. Happ needed 69 pitches to get eight outs. In his 2 2/3 innings, he allowed nine baserunners, four earned runs and two home runs, walked three, hit a batter and made an error. He was even worse than I could have ever envisioned him being.

The untrustworthy duo of Adam Ottavino, who can’t throw strikes or hold runners, and Jonathan Loaisiga, who is essentially the Nicaraguan Nathan Eovaldi with his high-90s, but very straight and very hittable fastball, made sure the Yankees didn’t come back by allowing a pair of runs. And the Yankees’ offense didn’t look like they could come back anyway, setting a team record for strikeouts in a postseason game with 18. 18! Jonathan Holder (1 IP, 0 ER, 1 K) and Nick Nelson (1 IP, 0 ER, 2 K) proved to be the two best Yankees pitchers in the game.

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If you had told me yesterday at 8:09 p.m. the Yankees would score four runs off Tyler Glasnow, Stanton would hit two home runs and Glasnow would only last five innings, I would have started worrying about the Astros and an ALCS rematch. Instead, the Yankees’ best-of-5 against the Rays is now a best-of-3.

It was always going to be extremely difficult to beat the Rays in a short series because they are essentially built to beat the Yankees. They hit Gerrit Cole well, they have two hard-throwing right-handed power pitchers in Glasnow and Charlie Morton, and a never-ending stable of trustworthy right-handed relievers who match up perfectly against the right-handed heavy Yankees. The one advantage the Yankees might have had in the series was the mystery and unknown of Garcia, who the Rays had never seen before. But instead of using that mystery, the Yankees chose to let Happ give them one more parting gift on his way out the door as a now impending free agent by taking a giant dump on the Petco Park mound.

Now it’s up to Tanaka to save the Yankees’ season, the same way it was up to him when the Yankees trailed the Indians 2-0 in the 2017 ALDS and when the Yankees trailed the Red Sox 1-0 in the 2018 ALDS after Happ’s memorable start. No, the Yankees aren’t trailing in this series like they were in those two, but they need to play, pitch and mange like they are because Game 3 is a must-win game, considering the Yankees don’t have a Game 4 starter. It’s not that they don’t have a Game 4 starter because they haven’t announced one like they did with Game 2. It’s that they actually don’t have a Game 4 starter.

It’s 100 percent not Happ. It can’t possibly be Jordan Montgomery. It has to be Garcia who only threw 27 pitches on Tuesday, the only 27 pitches he has thrown in 10 days. But maybe the Yankees will try another unconventional strategy. Maybe they will give the ball to Michael King, who they inexplicably let open so many games this season, and he will go three innings and give up his mandatory quota of at least three earned runs, and then they will turn it over to Holder or Nelson or Luis Cessa.

The Yankees now have to win a best-of-3 against a team they are now 3-8 against this season in order to erase the monumentally bad Game 2 pitching decision which was first-guessed when it was made and not second-guessed after the fact. The Yankees will have forever to think about their regrettable decision to not just go the easy route and go with Tanaka or to not commit to Garcia for a real start in Game 2 if they go on to lose this series and their season ends this week and another season of their current championship window is wasted. At least they have the right pitcher going in Game 3 to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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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!

Every Yankees postseason exit since their last World Series appearance can be attributed to a lack of hitting. When the Yankees couldn’t solve Cliff Lee or Colby Lewis a decade ago, their season ended two wins short of the World Series. When they stranded 11 baserunners in a do-or-die Game 5 at home to the Tigers nine years ago, they went home. When they scored six runs in 38 innings against the Tigers eight years ago, they were swept. When they were shut out by Dallas Keuchel, Tony Sipp, Will Harris and Luke Gregorson in the wild-card game five years ago, their postseason lasted nine innings. When they scored three runs in the four games in Houston three years ago, they fell one win shy of the World Series. When they scored four runs total in their two homes against the Red Sox two years ago, their season ended. And last year, when Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius, Gary Sanchez, Brett Gardner, Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo Stanton, Gio Urshela and Aaron Hicks combined to go 27-for-153 (.176) with 56 strikeouts against the Astros, the Yankees lost their fourth ALCS in a decade.

This postseason, while only three games so far, has been a different story. The Yankees scored 22 runs against the Indians in two games and then scored another nine in their first game against the Rays on Monday night. Their 31 runs over the three games established a major league record as the Yankees have looked like they have been hitting against Red Sox’ and Orioles’ pitching rather than Shane Bieber, Carlos Carrasco and Blake Snell. There hasn’t been talk about timely hitting, the need to manufacture runs or play small ball this postseason because the Yankees have been scoring in bunches, homering as if it’s early July instead of early October and putting up crooked numbers against some of the best pitchers in baseball.

The offense has mostly kept Aaron Boone in the dugout and has prevented him from ruining their season. It’s covered up a bad Masahiro Tanaka start and a bad Gerrit Cole start. It has allowed Luis Cessa to eat three of the team’s 27 innings so far (11 percent) to rest a depleted and underachieving bullpen, which is down to three trustworthy arms. It has led the Yankees to three straight wins to open the postseason and has set them up to only need to play .500 baseball over four games against the Rays to reach the ALCS for the second straight season.

Last October, the Yankees’ offense was DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres. Judge disappeared for the final four games of the ALCS and Gregorius did the same after his ALDS Game 2 grand slam. Stanton took himself out of the lineup in the ALCS, Luke Voit wasn’t on the postseason roster and Hicks missed the ALDS and returned to have one big hit. Encarnacion, Sanchez and Gardner might as well have not even taken a bat to the plate. This postseason though, everyone has contributed. Every single player. There hasn’t been a Yankee to get a plate appearance who hasn’t played a meaningful role, and that includes Tyler Wade of all Yankees, who drew a significant walk in the ninth to lead the Yankees to blowing open the game.

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It’s a good thing the Yankees blew open the game because I had a bad feeling about Aroldis Chapman coming into a one-run game, the way I always do about him coming into a one-run game. You never know which Chapman you’re going to get and after Cole had already blown two leads earlier in the game, I couldn’t physically take a third blown lead in a playoff game in a best-of-5 series to the Rays.

Cole wasn’t good in Game 1. He might have gotten the win and struck out eight in six innings, but he wasn’t good. If you think otherwise, then you’re content with mediocrity from a pitcher who is supposed to the best, or at worst, second-best in the world. Three earned runs in six innings isn’t good, it’s a 4.50 ERA. A 4.50 ERA is medicore, but Cole’s start wasn’t mediocre, it was actually bad when you consider his status and reputation. After he exited the game, TBS’ Brian Anderson said, “Well, Gerrit Cole, impressive here today.” Impressive? His Game 1 start against the Indians was impressive. In Game 1 against the Rays, he was bad.

Three earned runs against him is like five to six against other pitchers. If J.A. Happ or Jordan Montgomery had pitched to Cole’s Game 1 line (6 IP, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 2 HR), I would likely be praising them. But they’re not Cole and I don’t expect greatness from them. Cole expects more out of himself than he prodcued in Game 1, and there’s no way he’s happy or satisfied with his performance given the type of competitor he is. I was critical of him during the game and I still am after the game the same way a parent scolds their child because they only want the best for them, and that was far from Cole’s best.

Cole’s start proved him needing Kyle Higashioka to be his personal catcher is unnecessary. The stark difference in regular-season ERA between Sanchez catching him and Higashioka catching him was a result of Sanchez catching him against the Rays, and Monday confirmed it doesn’t matter who Cole throws to against the Rays, he has trouble with them. And the majority of that trouble comes from him inexplicably being unable to retire Ji-Man Choi. It’s not like he’s unable to retire Choi in a weird, quirky way like Enrique Wilson having a great average against Pedro Martinez from a bunch of singles. Choi is hitting a home run seemingly every time he faces Cole. It’s like Sanchez vs. David Price, or Sanchez vs. Snell (6-for-20, 1 2B, 5 HR, 7 BB, .300/.481/1.100), a matchup that didn’t happen because Higashioka has to catch Cole. Thankfully, Higashioka made up for his questionable game-calling with a game-tying home run and wasn’t the automatic out with ground balls to the left side he has been so many times. (Yes, I know Higashioka’s game-calling has little to do with Cole’s success, but if it’s going to be cited as the reason he catches Cole, then it needs to be criticized when Cole gives up three runs in six innings.) I expect Sanchez to be in the lineup for Game 2, but it wouldn’t surprise if he isn’t since nothing the Yankees do surprises me anymore. Anger me? Yes. Frustrate me? Yes. Annoy me? Yes. Surprise me? No.

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Actually, I shouldn’t say nothing surprises me. I couldn’t believe the Yankees hadn’t announced a Game 2 starter prior to late afternoon on Monday. Was there really an option other than Tanaka? It turns out there was and the Yankees weren’t just stalling for no reason as Deivi Garcia will get the ball on Tuesday. I, along with everyone else, assumed the Yankees would go Tanaka in Game 2, Happ in Game 3 and Garcia in Game 4, so this surprised me. But this isn’t the typical surprise from the Yankees, which is the bad kind of surprise. I really, really, really like this plan.

After winning Game 1, if the Yankees win Game 2, they will have one of the best pitchers in postseason history starting in Game 3 to close out the series. If the Yankees lose Game 2, they will have one of the best pitchers in postseason history starting in Game 3 to win an all-important swing game and push the Rays to the brink of elimination.

There isn’t any mystery left between two teams who played each other in 10 of their 60 games this season and who play each other 19 times in normal seasons. That is, except for Garcia. The Rays have never seen him, and in Game 2, that’s advantage Yankees.

Three down, 10 to go.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

***

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