2017 ALCS - New York Yankees vs Houston Astros

their history of evil is a given, kev

a Cubs-Yanks WS would be Hillary-Trump all over again

i'd rather root for the cubs but i'd have much less confidence in them

the yankees winning the pennant at all this year is just disgusting to think about

i do not & will never want the yankees to win anything but this team is likeable to me i see it

qualx, shame on you for giving up on this series already, you must be one of those Momentum clowns!

btw before he redeemed himself with the batting heroics, Judge nearly making 3 outs on the basepaths in one inning was LOL.

if the astros ended up winning the series...

last time two 100-game winners faced each other in the world series was...1970? reds vs o's?

it's kind of crazy to see how often, in the last 20 years, 100-game winners have been eliminated before reaching the WS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_100_win_seasons

that's baseball, etc etc

Scrolled through, and you're right--1970. A number of times one side was one or two wins short. Tried searching most-total-wins for a Series, but you need the right search term or you just get the Yankees for most total Series wins.

w/out looking it up i know that the year before, the Mets had 100 and the Orioles... 107? (looksup; 109)

I also remember that I was wearing a junior-size Mets jacket in 1970 and a nun in my parish who was from Baltimore japed at me, "You better get a jacket with the Orioles on it."

excellent and true jape

it's been weird listening to the astro's radio feed of these games and hearing ads for churches

btw I really hate hearing from raspy white journeymen like Todd Frazier after postseason wins every year. "The Yankee gods must've been watching over us." May his decline phase come soon.

saw someone touting him for the mets next year -- if only to give player-manager david wright an occasional day off

plz no

I remember Astro pitching coach Brent Strom as a Mets rookie in '72

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4325/35973930825_82bff7eb1c_c.jpg

fuck fox's homer Yankee kru

happily i watched 3 innings last night in a gay bar w/ bad music on

Astros' 2nd shows a PRODUCTIVE OUT sometimes doesn't produce.

can't stand the hyping of the yankee stadium crowd by the announcers , as if it were more special than any other baseball crowd.

also not a huge fan of the 2-3-2 home/away format, game 3 and 5 are pretty key and they get to be in the ballpark of the team with less reg. season wins.

they're all pretty key

xp agreed but I also like having a minimum # of travel days. don't much like the idea of a 3-man rotation or a dominant reliever pitching six games in a series

imo the biggest downside is that the team w/ more wins can lose 4-1 and only get 2 home games

trying to rationalise my hatred for the current score.

Need 2-3 quick runs vs Tanaka; pray when the relief starts.

fuck the yankees now and forever

https://i.imgur.com/9mOa2Nh.jpg

btw in my i.v. chair today i caught Steven Schirripa, who played Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri on The Sopranos, on some AM radio show (hyping his role in the new Woody Allen film). He and the hosts were ripping Puig, Cespedes, Cano, and Beltran for hot-dogging instead of running. Some of the Sopranos actors were good at playing racist dickheads for a reason...

is frazier really a better fielder than headley? if you're gonna play both and have one DH i'd have thought it would be the other way around

frazier is definitely a better fielder than headley

i guess the home team is winning every game in this one

yanks are driving the ball when they pull, which is something they've never done against keuchel in history

gasp

they've scored more runs against him today than they have in all his starts against the yanks since 2015

you better keep your gasping shoes on

I'd still be fairly confident going back to Houston that the Astros can win, but I won't say I'm not surprised at the way this is going--what I meant in the earlier post that the Cleveland series felt ominous to me. That wasn't supposed to happen at all.

AND HERE COMES BRAD PEACOCK

astros should've taken a cue from the dodgers and taken their slump in september

Nothing in the PS is supposed to happen except the Twins losing the WC game.

If Verlander is 'money' again Friday, there is the question of who pitches G7 (besides, inevitably, Keuchel in relief)

...i suppose they have to hope McCullers strikes twice?

I heard Morton

(Might have just been radio speculation though)

they'd be silly to start morton, gotta think they go with verlander in a must-win G6

We were talking about a G7!

ah got it--they kind of have to roll with mccullers, i think, considering how well he pitched for 6 yesterday

Is it more than the Yankee pitching?

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/whats-wrong-with-houstons-offense/

The Yankees are well constructed for their ballpark. Teams are, of course, generally better at home. This year, for example, clubs posted a 101 wRC+ mark at home this season and a 92 wRC+ on the road. The Yankees’ results were even more dramatic, though: they posted a 115 wRC+ at home this season (and 140 home runs) versus a 101 wRC+ on the road (101 home runs). The Yankees’ home wRC+ trailed only the Astros’ (121) in the regular season. Their home home-run total led baseball.

Home-field advantage is a real thing and is largely tied to umpire bias on borderline ball-strike calls, which the Yankee fans might be influencing according to Austin Romine....

But the Yankees’ edge goes beyond that in how their bats play in one of the more favorable offensive parks in baseball. It helped the Yankees to an AL-best home record and made up for a sub-.500 mark (40-41) on the road.

The Yankees are making quality contact like no other playoff team (although the Dodgers’ are doing OK for themselves). While that’s a small sample, there’s reason to believe it’s sustainable: in the regular reason, only the Astros were a better offensive team at home. The Yankees have continued that trend in October. While the Yankees will not enjoy home-field advantage in terms of number of games should they advance to the World Series, none of the remaining clubs is enjoying their home field more than the Yankees.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-yankees-air-ball-and-home-field-advantages/

love those flyball cheap HRs in da Bronx

Ted
Is there any particular strategy (or strategies) the Yankees should look to employ against Verlander tonight? He looked downright invincible last time out

Jeff Sullivan
Last night, the Dodgers came out very aggressive against Jose Quintana, knowing that he loves to strike early and get ahead
With Verlander, as you'd expect, he's pretty fastball-heavy early in counts. He goes to the slider when he's out ahead. He made terrific use of that slider earlier in the series. There's not much for the Yankees to do to prepare, but they should at least think about going after more first-pitch fastballs