Heavyweights on the Undercard: Get Ready for Yankees-Red Sox

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Aaron Judge, left, and Giancarlo Stanton each homered for the Yankees in the wild-card game on Wednesday night.CreditCreditJustin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Tyler Kepner

Oct. 4, 2018

There has never been a first-round playoff series quite like this. A division series matchup between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox is like an undercard with Ali and Frazier. They are heavyweights with a history.

Actually, forget that history – for a moment, anyway. When the Yankees set a date with the Boston Red Sox by thumping the Oakland Athletics in Wednesday’s wild card game, 7-2, it locked in baseball’s 100th division series matchup. This one stands alone as the first between 100-win teams.

Major League Baseball introduced this best-of-five round in 1981, to settle the division titles in an odd split season created by a long summer strike. The league revived the concept for the 1995 playoffs, and the frenetic format makes it a lightning round, the only postseason series in M.L.B., the N.B.A. or the N.H.L. that is not a best-of-seven.

The Red Sox led the majors with 108 victories this season, five more than the Houston Astros, who won the American League West and will meet the Cleveland Indians in the first round. The Yankees had 100 wins, but as a runner-up to Boston in the East, they were forced to play Oakland in the wild-card game.

Major league attendance fell by 4 percent this season, a drop Commissioner Rob Manfred attributed largely to awful spring weather. The large number of rebuilding teams very likely contributed too, but now baseball hopes to see the benefit, showcasing the glamour teams that pushed around the losers.

“In general, our goal is to see competitive balance across a reasonable period of time,” Manfred said at Wrigley Field on Tuesday, before the Colorado Rockies’ riveting victory over the Chicago Cubs in the National League wild card game.

“You’re not going to have perfect balance every year. The flip side of that is there’s something exciting about 100-win teams. A lot of buzz around it, and we’ve got some very good teams in the playoffs. You don’t want to see it go on that way with a lot of 100-win teams year after year after year, particularly if it’s the same team. But I don’t think on a one-year basis it’s a problem for us.”

A problem? For baseball and its broadcast partner, TBS, Yankees/Red Sox is the dream. Only the A’s could have spoiled it, but the Yankees dispatched them with ease.

Luis Severino overwhelmed the A’s with fastballs and carved them with sliders, sprinting to the fifth inning to start the bullpen relay that defines the modern postseason. The Yankees’ twin sluggers both went deep – Aaron Judge early, Giancarlo Stanton late – and their pitchers piled up 13 strikeouts.

“I think that’s a really good look at kind of when we’re at our best right there,” Manager Aaron Boone said. “We did a lot of things well.”

They will need the same kind of effort to take down a Boston team with the skills that matter most in October. The Red Sox and the Yankees ranked first and second in slugging percentage this season, but Boston made much more contact, which will be critical against the Yankees’ power pitching staff. While the Yankees’ hitters ranked ninth in the majors in strikeouts, the Red Sox ranked 26th.

The Red Sox also take more chances on the bases, with 125 steals to the Yankees’ 63, giving them another way to rally. They have two strong candidates for Most Valuable Player in Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez, a deep and versatile bench, a dominant closer in Craig Kimbrel and a rotation that starts with Chris Sale, David Price and Rick Porcello.

“Everything about them,” said C.C. Sabathia, when asked about the challenge of beating Boston. “They’ve got two of the best pitchers in the league in Sale and Price, and Porcello’s obviously a really good starter. But their lineup top to bottom, is, if not better, then just as good as ours with the speed, the power — everything.”

The Red Sox cannot match the Yankees in setup relievers, which puts more of a burden on a rotation that has never won a postseason start. Sale lost his only playoff start last fall; Price is 0-8 in nine playoff starts; Porcello is 0-2 in four; and Nate Eovaldi has never appeared in the postseason.

Sale will start Game 1, but shoulder trouble has limited him to 17 innings since July 27, while unplugging his fastball. Price will start Game 2, dragging these numbers with him: a 2-7 record and a 7.71 earned run average in 11 starts for Boston against the Yankees.

For his part, Stanton has thrived against the Red Sox in his first year as a Yankee, batting .371 with five homers and a 1.123 on-base plus slugging percentage. Last week, when a fan in the Green Monster seats chucked a Stanton homer back to the infield – and hit Stanton with the throw! – Stanton had the grace and good humor to smile and salute as he rounded the bases.

Stanton, 28, was a high school sophomore the last time the Yankees met Boston in the playoffs, in 2004, when the Red Sox stormed back from a three-games-to-none deficit in the A.L. Championship Series. They went on to beat St. Louis in the World Series and vanquish Babe Ruth’s curse.

Boone, whose homer had won Game 7 for the Yankees against Boston in 2003, sat out that postseason. His Yankees tenure had ended when he injured his knee playing pickup basketball in the off-season.

“I had signed with Cleveland and I was still coming back,” Boone said. “I had just had my microfracture surgery, so I was watching somewhere.”

Those Yankees/Red Sox clashes – plus another, in the 1999 A.L.C.S. – were so long ago that few of these Yankees could remember much about them. Second baseman Gleyber Torres was seven years old during the 2004 A.L.C.S., and Severino was 10.

“I think at that time I didn’t even have TV,” Severino said. “I’m not even sure. But I think I’ve been shown the highlights. It will be fun. Really fun.”

Luke Voit, the Yankees’ folk-hero first baseman, played for his hometown Cardinals in their rivalry games against the Chicago Cubs. That atmosphere was electric, Voit said, but he knows this series will be different.

“Boston/Yankees is like the oldest rivalry in sports,” Voit said, in the soggy Yankees clubhouse late Wednesday night. “Hearing the stadium tonight, I can’t imagine when Boston comes here. It’s something I’m super-excited for.”

Super-excited for a super-team matchup that has never happened this early in modern postseason history.