The Yankees escaped an early scoring barrage by the Twins Tuesday night, advancing to the ALDS to face a Cleveland squad that might be even better than the one that came within an eyelash of winning it all last year. What comes next will be a test of skill, but also one of strategy. Even with two teams that won 193 games between them, there are weaknesses to exploit, and matchups to target.
Here then are four of the biggest tactical decisions and potential battles we'll be watching in this series.
Corey Kluber... not the Game 1 starter
The formula for playoff baseball has always been simple: Start your ace in Game 1. Cleveland manager Terry Francona's going with another path. His starter in the ALDS opener isn't his number-one, Corey Kluber. It's not even his number-two, Carlos Carrasco. It's the team's talented but inconsistent number-three starter Trevor Bauer.
Francona's rationale for starting Kluber in Game 2 rather than Game 1 is that he could go to Kluber again on full rest if a Game 5 becomes necessary, thanks to two travel days in between. But as my esteemed colleague Matt Snyder wrote, the move is a puzzler once you get beyond that.
If Francona doesn't want to start Kluber on short rest given the way the Cy Young winner finally wore down in Game 7 of last year's World Series due to overuse, then he can always start him in Game 1 and 5. If he insists on this weird Kluber strategy anyway, then why not go with Carrasco, Kluber's ultra-talented running mate who's having a breakout season and might've been the third-best pitcher in the American League this year behind Kluber and Chris Sale? As Snyder noted, Carrasco was stingier at home (3.99 ERA) than on the road (2.65 ERA) this year, but that still doesn't explain Bauer over Kluber.
Even with a much-improved second half, Bauer still posted a 4.16 ERA this season, flashing one of the AL's highest walk and home-run rates. Sure, that would make Bauer even more vulnerable at homer-happy Yankee Stadium. But the counterargument is that you simply roll out your two co-aces to start the series, shoot for a commanding 2-0 lead, and ride your incredibly deep and talented bullpen coming off a day of rest in Game 3 if Bauer's not up to the task.
Cleveland's a more talented team than the Yankees overall, so this odd sequencing may well work out anyway. But it's hard to look at this decision and see a normally excellent manager tying himself up in knots for no good reason.
No Chad Green and David Robertson in Game 1
Another hat-tip to a colleague, in this case Mike Axisa, for eloquently laying out the Yankees' bullpen dilemma at the start of the Cleveland series. In short, Chad Green and David Robertson, the two best relievers on the roster, likely won't be available for Game 1 of the ALDS, after pitching multiple high-leverage, high-stress innings against the Twins Tuesday night.
Their absence could require some serious ingenuity from Yankees skipper Joe Girardi. The Yankees' third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-best relievers are better than many teams' top four, so that's a good start. But this could still be a stiff challenge for the Bombers. We know that Aroldis Chapman will get ninth-inning duty. But how hard can the Yanks lean on excellent righty setup man Tommy Kahnle, two days after the second-longest outing of his career took 2 ⅓ innings and 29 pitches to complete?
The bigger question might be how much much Girardi trusts Dellin Betances. The skyscraping righty owns some of the best raw stuff in baseball, and struck out a jaw-dropping 38.3% of the batters he faced this season, making it five straight years that he's rung up more than 38% of his opponents. But Betances' command frequently deserted him this season: He walked one of every six batters he faced, creating numerous jams, some of which he was unable to escape.
The good news is that the Yankees Game 1 starter (more on that in a minute) is a virtual lock to last more than one-third of an inning, both because this isn't an elimination game like Tuesday night's contest was, and because it's tough to imagine anyone pitching as poorly as Luis Severino did two nights ago. But if said starter starts to run into trouble around the fourth or fifth inning, the Yankees pen, Girardi's maneuvering, and individual relievers continuing to embrace situations they might not have seen very often will be heavily tested against a potent Cleveland offense.
Who starts Game 1 for the Yankees?
They've named their Game 1 starter, going with midseason acquisition Sonny Gray. The right-hander's overall numbers as a Yankee were shaky, with Gray allowing an alarming 11 home runs and 27 walks in 65 1/3 innings. Getting that homer-prone profile out of Yankee Stadium is a plus at least; that ballpark's right-field short porch is a borderline Little League ballpark feature.
Interestingly, the Yanks opted for lefty CC Sabathia as the Game 2 choice. As a lefty, Sabathia might be less prone to have left-handed hitters take aim at that short porch against him. Moreover, it's not clear that Sabathia's a good pick to start ahead of rotation mate Masahiro Tanaka.
The Japanese right-hander pitched brilliantly in five of his final seven regular-season starts, allowing just seven runs in those five outings, going seven innings each time, striking out 40 batters and walking just five. Granted, Tanaka got shelled in his other two starts over that span. But his 15-strikeout, no-walk, scoreless outing against Toronto to end his season showcased the Japanese right-hander's dominance, and his ability to miss bats. Even at his best, Sabathia is more of a pitch-to-contact hurler at this stage of his career, and Cleveland's bats could make him pay if he misses by a quarter-inch at any point.
Any way you slice it, Cleveland will have the edge in games when it starts Kluber and Carrasco.
Running on Gary Sanchez
Let's start here: The relentless criticism that certain members of the New York media have been lobbing at Sanchez has gotten out of hand. El Gary is one of the most devastating power hitters in the game, and he does all that mashing while manning the most defensively demanding position, making him an incredibly rare elite hitter at a position that very rarely churns those out.
Still, his defense needs work, something that even Sanchez himself has acknowledged. He saw a massive 53 wild pitches scoot by him this season, to go with a league-leading 16 passed balls, despite starting just 99 games behind the plate. Meanwhile Cleveland was one of the speediest and most aggressive baserunning teams this year, ranking sixth in Baserunning Runs, a stat that measures a team's ability both to steal bases successfully and to take extra bases when opportunities present themselves. Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, and other skilled baserunners could take off on the smallest Sanchez bobble, setting up scoring chances for Cleveland.
Sanchez's defense isn't always a liability, though. He threw out 38% of would-be basestealers this season, one of the highest rates in the league and well above the league average of 27%. Cleveland was a middle-of-the-pack basestealing team in 2017, and the team's top basestealer Bradley Zimmer will probably miss the rest of the postseason with a broken hand. So we might see them run, while heavily favoring balls in the dirt.
