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The New York Yankees and Houston Astros – blood rivals of a recent vintage thanks to the finer points of the sign-stealing scandals and numerous playoff encounters – will meet in the American League Championship Series that starts Wednesday night with Game 1 at Minute Maid Park. 

Unlike the NLCS, which pits the upstart San Diego Padres against the equally upstart Philadelphia Phillies, this one is more of a gathering of familiar old warhorses. These were the top two teams in the AL during the regular season, and this marks the fourth time since 2015 that these squads have run into each other in the playoffs. The Astros won each of those prior encounters, which means Aaron Boone and the Yankees are desperately seeking a reversal of fortunes. Will they get that? The forthcoming X-factors might be what answers that question. 

1. The rest factor

Although the Yankees and Astros have followed generally similar playoff paths to this point – first-round byes followed by ALDS triumphs – the similarities end there. The Astros in the ALDS swept the Mariners, albeit in hotly contested fashion, while the Yankees prevailed in the full five games over the Guardians in a series that was dragged out by two rainouts. As a consequence, the Astros come into ALCS Game 1 on three days of rest and with their rotation lined up in optimal fashion. Account for that wild-card bye, and the Astros have played just three games (yes, one of which spanned 18 innings) in the last 12 days. 

Some will, of course, argue that such a layoff is not necessarily a good thing on account of upturned rhythms and accumulating rust and whatnot. However, there's very little evidence for this. This postseason alone, for instance, teams coming out of the first-round bye went 3-1 in their first LDS games, which is when any hypothetical negative effects of the layoff would be the most pronounced. The more sensible assumption is that after 162 games and six months of regular season, there's no such thing as too much rest within reason. That brings us to the Yankees, who, thanks to the second postponement, didn't conclude their LDS until Tuesday – i..e., the day before the ALCS would begin in Houston. 

So the Astros are much more rested than the Yankees, who will turn to fourth starter Jameson Taillon in Game 1 to oppose Houston ace Justin Verlander. The divide may be even more pronounced in the bullpen. The Astros have perhaps the deepest pitching staff in baseball, while the Yankees are working with a patchwork relief corps thanks to a rash of injuries. The Astros would have an edge in bullpen depth even if the rest situations were reversed. Things as they are, though, that edge becomes a massive one. How Yankees manager Aaron Boone deploys his thin pen and how well those deployments work figures to have an outsized influence on this series. 

2. Justin Verlander and Jose Altuve

These two Houston linchpins are coming off thoroughly substandard series against Seattle. In Verlander's case, he started Game 1 of the ALDS, and he was burned to a crisp by Mariners hitters: 4 IP, 10 H, 6 R, 3 SO, 1 BB. In terms of Game Score, which is a quick-and-dirty Bill James metric that measures a pitcher's dominance or lack thereof in a given start (50 is average and anything 90 or higher is an absolute gem), Verlander's ALDS Game 1 figure of 20 is the worst of his postseason career. It's also his worst Game Score of any start, postseason or regular season, since August of 2018. 

Nothing was really off in terms of the 39-year-old's velocity in that start, but his spin rates on multiple offerings were down significantly relative to regular-season norms. That was especially the case with the slider, which against Seattle he leaned on more than he usually does. This happened even though league-wide spin rates have increased by quite a bit in these playoffs. There may be no cause for concern here – maybe just some temporary grip issues – but Verlander's early spin rates against the Yankees could be telling. Absent an unlikely sweep in this series, the Astros will need Verlander to make two starts against New York, and they need him in something close to vintage form. 

As for Altuve, he was in peak form during the regular season, but he struggled badly at the plate against Seattle — 0 for 16 with one walk against six strikeouts. That's a miniscule sample size, which means the explanation is that it's probably just one of those short-run things common to baseball. That said, our own R.J. Anderson writes that the Mariners found success against the usually potent Altuve by feeding him fastballs up and in. To the extent that this approach is replicable and meaningful – again, it could just be sample-size noise – the Yankees are pretty well equipped to ape the strategy in the ALCS. When it comes to the hard stuff as a percentage of overall pitches, the Yankee pitching staff during the regular season had the 10th-highest rate in MLB. By way of relevant comparison, the Mariners ranked 17th. 

3. The Yankees' other right-handed batters in Minute Maid Park

By other, we mean those not named Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton. We know what that duo can do, and the Guardians will certainly speak to that reality. Rather, we're talking about the lesser right-handed likes of Josh Donaldson, Gleyber Torres, Harrison Bader, and Jose Trevino. 

The drop-off when it comes to the non-star portions of the Yankee lineup is well chronicled and reflects ownership's half-hearted commitment (the same is largely true of Houston, to be fair). However, these righty bats may find the games – Games 1, 2, and if necessary 6, and 7 – in Houston a bit more accommodating toward their skills. Thanks to the Crawford Boxes seating section in left, Minute Maid Park is just 315 feet down the left field line, and the wall height of those Crawford Boxes, 19 feet, doesn't quite negate that distance.

Speaking of these matters, let's compare these right-handed hitters' actual home run totals to the Statcast-projected total they would've hit if they'd played all their games in Minute Maid Park. 

Hitter

Games

2022 home runs

Projected HR total in Minute Maid Park

Josh Donaldson

132

15

23

Gleyber Torres

140

24

28

Harrison Bader

86

5

9

Josh Trevino

115

11

15

Taken together, this quartet had 55 home runs during the regular season. However, Statcast estimates that, in an "all Minute Maid Park, all the time" scenario, they would've combined for 75 home runs -- that's a fairly whopping increase of 36.4 percent. Donaldson and Bader, who both pull the ball at a high percentage of time, seem especially well equipped to take advantage (and Bader's power stroke seems to be returning more and more the further he gets from his foot problems that laid him up for so long earlier this year). 

If the Yankees are going to have a lineup in this series that's more than just Judge and Stanton, then these righty bats need to take advantage of the Crawford Boxes when the games are in Houston. The numbers suggest they can do that. 

4. Game 3

Game 3 typically marks an important pivot point in a best-of-seven series, and the ALCS figures to be no exception. The likely outcome is that one team is going to have a 2-1 lead after Game 3 (3-0 series tallies are comparatively uncommon), and across the history of MLB best-of-seven series the team that leads 2-1 goes on to win the series more than 70 percent of the time. 

Specific to this series, Game 3 marks the shift to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and it would also be the first time Yankees ace Gerrit Cole could start on full rest in this series. That, in turn, would give the Yankees' the presumed edge in starting-pitcher matchups for the first time in the series. Barring an unlikely 2-0 lead for New York, Game 3 will probably approach "must win" status for the Yanks.