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Tag: Dallas Keuchel

Blogs • Yankees

Oct 6, 2015

The Wild-Card Game: Judgment Day

I went to bed on Monday night with a Christmas Eve-type feeling. That’s the feeling I haven’t gotten in three years.

I went to bed on Monday night with a Christmas Eve-type feeling because that’s the feeling I get the night before the Yankees’ first postseason game. That’s the feeling I haven’t gotten in three years.

All of the hours spent watching, writing, talking, reading and listening about this team all makes it worth it on Tuesday night. Well, that is if the Yankees win.

My confidence level for the wild-card game isn’t good. The Yankees will face the one pitcher (outside of 2009-2010 Cliff Lee showing up via the 4 train in the Bronx again) that I didn’t want them to face. They will face Cliff Lee 2.0, a pitcher who has dominated and beaten them twice without allowing a run in 16 innings this season. The only glimmer of hope in beating Dallas Keuchel is that he’s going to be pitching on three days rest for the first time in his professional career. Outside of that, the only positive I can get out of the Yankees and their left-handed heavy lineup against the best left-handed in the American League is looking at his line from Sept. 16 against Texas.

4.2 IP, 11 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 3 HR.

I’m not sure what happened that day. I have no idea how Keuchel gave up 11 hits or nine runs or three home runs or how left-handed hitters Rougned Odor and Prince Fielder hit home runs off of him. That game, nearly three weeks ago, is the only thing keeping me from feeling any less confident about this game than I already do.

Masahiro Tanaka is going to have to be perfect or close to it on Tuesday night. I would gladly sign up for two runs against Keuchel right now and that means one run against Tanaka to hand the ball to the bullpen and let Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller get this season to the ALDS.

It took two months of bad baseball for the Yankees to end up in this spot when they had a seven-game divison lead (and eight-game lead over the Blue Jays) the week of the trade deadline. They chose not to mortgage the future of the team for a run this season, watched the Blue Jays completely turn over their roster for the better and run away with the division, settled for a wild-card berth and backed into the first wild-card spot in the most depressing way possible. None of that matters now. What matters is one game to extend the season and to get to where this team would be pre-2012 in the old playoff format: in the ALDS.

I wasn’t a fan of the new postseason format when it was implemented and am still not today. The only thing the new format has done for Yankees is given us a few extra “meaningful” games in 2013 and 2014, which were just a tease to get excited about two teams we all knew weren’t going anywhere. And now all it’s gotten us is a one-game playoff against the Yankees’ most-feared pitcher. Maybe someday the second wild card will actually benefit the Yankees and be the reason they reached the postseason, but in four years it hasn’t and this year it hurts them, so I’m still against it.

There’s a good chance the Yankees wouldn’t be in this spot if they never let Chris Capuano start three games in May and didn’t let Stephen Drew and Brendan Ryan get five months of at-bats that should have gone to Rob Refsnyder. They likely wouldn’t be in this spot if Joe Girardi didn’t keep handing the ball to Esmil Rogers or turn to Branden Pinder and Caleb Cotham, or think it was 2009 or 2010 when he would call on Andrew Bailey. But they are in this spot and now they have to get out of it.

Two months of being a .500 baseball team put the Yankees in this spot though on Tuesday night they have the chance to erase questionable managerial and front office moves and the decision to stand pat (aside from acquiring Dustin Ackley) at the trade deadline. They have the chance to make everyone forget about their horrible August and September and their embarrassing finish. They have the chance to win their first playoff game at Yankee Stadium since Game 5 of the 2012 ALDS and get back to the ALDS for the first time since that season. They have a chance to begin the kind of run the Royals went on last season and go to Kansas City to continue that run.

The Yankees have a chance to change how this season will be remembered with a win on Tuesday night. But to do so, they will have to get through Dallas Keuchel.

I think I’m going to throw up.

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Blogs • Yankees

Jul 6, 2015

The Necessary Nine

The Yankees have an important nine-game stretch before the All-Star break that could set them up nicely for the second half if they win six of the games.

New York Yankees

In 2007, the Yankees faced a 12-game stretch that the Daily News believed would make or break their season by calling it the “Dirty Dozen.” In 2013, the Yankees faced a 14-game stretch before the All-Star break, which held the same challenge, that I called the Final 14. Both stretches presented times the Yankees were fighting for their playoff lives and needing to win in bunches to keep their season from turning meaningless. This season, before the All-Star break, the Yankees are in a different position, but playing a very significant stretch: the Necessary Nine.

I have been fortunate to have a baseball summer nearly my entire life. The last time the Yankees finished under .500 was 1992 when I was six. Since then, it’s been 22 straight over-.500 seasons with playoff appearances every season except for 1994 (thanks to the strike), 2008, 2013 and 2014. The 2008, 2013 and 2014 were good enough to keep my summers alive and string me along into believing they could overcome incredible injuries, but they weren’t good to give me a fall. And like Bobby Knight once told his Indiana team, “You will not put me in that f-cking position again.” I need a fall this year. I have to have a fall.

The 2015 Yankees are a weird team. They have the ability to start the year 3-6 and then go on an 18-6 run. They have been swept by the Rangers and have swept the Royals. They have lost two out of three to the Phillies at home and they have beaten Jacob deGrom, Felix Hernandez and Max Scherzer. They have been unpredictable and frustrating at times and dominant and unbeatable other times. But the one constant with them is that they have stayed at or near the top of the AL East for the entire season, which is something they weren’t able to do the last two years.

The “Necessary Nine” began on Friday night against Tampa Bay. With nine games against the Rays, A’s and Red Sox standing between the Yankees from the All-Star break and four consecutive off days, this is their chance to create separation in the division and take the Red Sox out of the race completely. The Red Sox have played better of late even with the worst rotation in the league, but they’re still six games under .500 (39-45) even if Bostonians want you to believe that record is reversed with their over-the-top optimism. A series win or another sweep in Boston this weekend would keep the Yankees where they are and send the city of Boston into an All-Star Game depression, allowing them to do something other than focus on baseball for the rest of summer.

Sunday’s loss to the Rays was the 82nd game of the season and the official start of the second half (the first post-All-Star Game will be the 89th game), and with the 8-1 loss, the Yankees are 44-38 and one game up in the division. The series win over the Rays was the first checkpoint for the “Necessary Nine” since it kept them on pace for the needed record over this stretch, kept the Rays at bay and kept the Yankees in first place and still one game up, which is where they were before Friday’s game, while taking three more games off the schedule. Next up is beating up on the lowly A’s before the important first-half finale in Boston.

But before the Yankees head to Boston, they have to take care of business at home against the A’s, a last-place team that already took three of four from them in Oakland at the end of May. And since the Yankees never miss out on facing an opposing team’s ace, of course they will see Sonny Gray in the series opener on Tuesday night. It will be the second time the Yankees have seen him, after just having seen Chris Archer over the weekend, C.J. Wilson the series before that, Dallas Keuchel the series before that and Cole Hamels the series before that.

The Yankees should win six of the nine and now that they have already won two, that means winning four of six against the last-place A’s and Red Sox. “Should” was never a problem in the pre-2013 Yankees world, but now it’s become a dangerous and powerful word that leaves Yankees fans puzzled after disappointing losses to bad teams.

I want to go back to when the Yankees took care of business against bad teams and games they “should” win turned into actual wins. I want to go back to when the Yankees being in first place at the All-Star break was a sure-thing. We’re almost there.

 

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