Finally. No more 60-game regular-season schedule or best-of-three wild-card series. It’s October and it’s playoffs like we remember them: best-of-five … er … yeah. Best-of-five.
Beyond that, well, it’s all different. San Diego’s Petco Park is serving as the locale for series between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays while the Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros will meet at Dodger Stadium — different hitters parks compared to their home fields. The Yankees won’t have that short porch in right field; the Astros will see a left-field wall fully 19 feet farther from home than Minute Maid Park. And that’s before we’ve factored in the marine layer and all that stuff.
Another thing separating these ALDS from any other of recent vintage: the levels of hate. The Yankees and Rays rivalry became so heated this season that manager Kevin Cash effectively threatened the Yankees, citing the velocity of his relievers after Aroldis Chapman threw high to Mike Brosseau. The Athletics, meanwhile, might start Mike Fiers in this series and all the former Astros pitcher did was act as the whistle-blower who blew the lid off last winter’s sign-stealing scandal. He didn’t pitch in 10 games between the teams this season, including the one where the A’s Ramon Laureano challenged the Astros bench after Astros coach Alex Cintron insulted his mother. Nice. Cintron received a 20-game suspension.
Oh, by the way, as part of the quasi-bubble baseball is using in the playoffs, the Yankees and Rays are in the same hotel. Ditto for the Astros and A’s. Could make for fun morning lineups at the coffee bar…
With both ALDS set to begin Monday, these six players could have a significant impact on the outcome of the series.
BLAIR’S PICKS: Rays over Yankees in five games; A’s over Astros in four games.
1. Randy Arozarena, OF, Rays
Could be anybody, really. Arozarena. Joey Wendle. Brandon Lowe. Ji-man Choi. Austin Meadows might be the exception: if we knew he was going to be on the roster and play every day then for sure he’d be the guy here. Either way, the key to the Rays lineup is depth and versatility, because no manager plays for the platoon advantage the way Kevin Cash plays for it.
Arozarena played himself into the forefront of Cash’s mind — and into the top-third of the order — by being one of the Rays’ most effective hitters in September when the team was fighting to find some kind of offensive footing and he was dynamic in the wild-card series against the Toronto Blue Jays. They’re getting some of their injured bodies back, but it isn’t hard to see Arozarena being in a position to do something dramatic in a series in which the Yankees will try to leverage lefty relievers Zach Britton and Chapman.
2. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros
He’s part of the post-season furniture, and if the Astros are serious about this mad plan to stick a fork in the games’ collective eye after all the drama surrounding sign-stealing, he’ll be the one leading the parade. The A’s seem to have the pitching edge in this series but they don’t hit a great deal, and while Bregman won’t have the Crawford Boxes at which to take aim — left-field at Dodger Stadium is 330 feet, compared to 315 at the Astros’ home in Minute Maid Park — he will be facing a team he has had success against: 10 home runs in 134 at bats, with nice personal numbers (6-for-11) against A’s bullpen workhorse Liam Hendriks.
Neither offence offers much of a threat, but what has happened to the Astros is alarming: their slugging percentage was down a whopping 87 points this season, their contact rate and barrel percentages both fell and they were brutal with runners in scoring position. Bregman is a case in point, although it must be pointed out that he missed three weeks with a strained hamstring. He hit just .242 and slugged .250 on breaking balls, compared to his .588 slugging on breaking pitches in 2019. Remember: we’re talking less than half a season for sample size, but the offensive decline certainly provides fuel for those skeptical of how above-board the Astros have been in recent seasons. Knowing Bregman, that pisses him off.
3. Gerrit Cole, RH, Yankees
It’s not simply the matter of that nine-year, $324-million contract and the fact that anybody in pinstripes ultimately has their Yankees reputation measured in post-season success. It’s the fact that Cole has never pitched on three days rest, and that will create a storyline if the series goes five games because there is no off-day in the division series this year. Will Cole be available if needed? Cole, recall, sliced and diced the Rays last post-season when he was with the Astros, going 2-0 with 25 strikeouts, three walks and one earned run allowed over 15 2/3 innings.
The Rays hit him harder this year and made him work more in three regular-season games by walking more, but especially down the stretch there was more swing-and-miss to the Rays’ approach which might play into Cole’s hands. Teams that win Game 1 have a 70 per cent success rate in division series; he’ll be matched up against the Rays best starter, Blake Snell. Kyle Higashioka became his personal catcher in September and he was a beast in his final four starts with Higashioka behind the plate, registering more strike calls on the upper edge of the zone than with Gary Sanchez.
4. Liam Hendriks, RH, Athletics
Time to ‘fess up: Hendriks and Gio Urshela are the two former Blue Jays whose post-Toronto success stuns the hell out of me. The A’s will ride their Major League-best bullpen to what I think will be a series win over the Astros, as manager Bob Melvin showed all of us in the wild-card series when he had Hendriks throw 68 pitches in back-to-back games to put away the Chicago White Sox.
It will be fascinating to see how Melvin and Astros manager Dusty Baker handle their bullpens, especially with no off-days. Neither team is the offensive threat of the teams they eliminated which could perhaps suggest longer stints for starting pitchers, which would in turn limit bullpen exposure. But my goodness: after seeing Hendriks hit 100 miles per hour in his second outing last week, how on earth could Melvin resist the temptation to be aggressive with him?
5. Aaron Judge, OF, Yankees
The key number behind the Rays winning eight of 10 regular-season games against the Yankees might be “19” — the combined number of man-games missed by D.J. LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres, Giancarolo Stanton and Judge, the latter of whom was out for six of the games. Judge generally doesn’t like to face the Rays: he’s 6-for-52 lifetime against them and 2-for-29 against starters Blake Snell and Charlie Morton. Judge has nine home runs in 29 post-season games and has been oddly inconsistent; crushing a two-run blast off likely Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber in Game 1 of the wild-card series against the Cleveland Indians … then proceeding to go 0-for-8, leaving him in an 11-for-50 funk in the post-season.
He’s 8-for-44 since coming off the 10-day injured list and has struck out 17 times. The homer off Bieber is the only one he’s hit. It’s a burden he needs to shed and it’s a sign of his significance that he makes these lists every season. Or, maybe, it’s just wishful thinking.
6. Cristian Javier, RH/Framber Valdez, LH, Astros
Fifteen. That’s the number of rookie pitchers used by the Astros in 2020. Five of them were starters, and the rookie Javier combined with one of the season’s breakout stars – Valdez – to add length to a rotation shredded by the loss of Justin Verlander, a loss of effectiveness by Zack Greinke and, in the post-season, rescue a bullpen decimated by injury. Baker has been the subject of criticism over his long career for misusing pitchers but he and pitching coach Brent Strom have done some kind of job this off-season: eschewing using rookies on back-to-back days and in general avoiding back-to-back outings even for veteran relievers — just three of them were used back-to-back more than twice.
In beating the more-fancied Minnesota Twins in two games in their wild-card series, he used Valdez and Javier out of the bullpen. Genius move. In Game 1, Valdez came on after four innings from Greinke and joined Pedro Martinez and Madison Bumgarner as the only pitchers since 1999 to toss five-plus scoreless innings to finish out a game. Forty-six per-cent of his pitches were his elite curveball, against which opponents are hitting .117 since he entered the Majors in 2018. Valdez, who was second in the AL in homers per nine innings, fifth in walks per nine innings and sixth in innings pitched, is a ground ball machine who will start Game 2. Javier, who set up closer Ryan Pressly for the save in Game 2, ranked fourth among all AL pitchers in opponents average against. The Astros lineup has been there and done that; their arms need to give them a chance for that experience to manifest itself.
