This is the Carlos Rodón the Yankees thought they were getting. When Brian Cashman inked the lefty to a six-year, $162-million contract in December 2022, Rodón was coming off a two-season stretch in which he’d gone 27-13 with a 2.67 ERA, 2.42 FIP, and 12.23 strikeouts per nine innings. From 2021 to 2022, his 11.2 WAR ranked the third among all pitchers. But, like Samson of old, Rodón’s strength deserted him when his beard fell victim to the Yankees’ facial-hair policy. A forearm strain and a hamstring issue limited him to 14 starts in 2023, and when he did take the hill, he ran an unsightly 6.85 ERA. He was better this season, but he was by no means the ace the Bronx faithful were expecting.

That guy finally showed up on Monday night. Rodón powered the Yankees to a 5-2 victory over the Guardians in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, going six dominant innings and allowing one earned run on a solo homer. He blew his fastball by the Guardians and tempted them over and over again into chasing his slider as it burrowed into the dirt. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now down to our final two teams in the American League, the New York Yankees and Cleveland Guardians, who will hash things out in the best-of-seven ALCS starting Monday in the Bronx. Baseball, like most sports, is at it’s peak for fun when there’s something to prove and a little bit of competitive vengeance worked into the mix.

It’s now been 15 years since the Yankees last won the World Series. Unlike their last long championship drought, during their mediocre 1980s and early ’90s, the Bombers have mostly been good since their 2009 title. They’ve made the postseason 10 times in that span and have played in five Championship Series (though they’ve failed to advance each time). Yes, the franchise that was once accused of destroying baseball because it was winning too many championships now draws scrutiny for lately having won too few. There are a lot of reasons for the organization’s relative lack of success lately, but many fans point to a mysterious blend of Brian Cashman, too much analytics, not enough bunting, and Aaron Boone, who at various points has been accused of being the worst manager to have ever existed. Until the 11th time’s the charm for the Yankees, nobody’s going to fear Mystique and Aura.

If the Yankees face a drought, the Guardians are dealing with one of Joadian proportions. Where the Yankees were emblematic as the big evil franchise, the theme among Cleveland baseball for a long time was ineptitude. When they filmed the movie Major League, there was little controversy as to which franchise would play the doormat protagonists. At least the Cubs were considered losers of the lovable ilk. The last 30 years represent the most successful epoch for Cleveland baseball, but the franchise is still lacking a World Series trophy during that span. The last time Cleveland won it all, in 1948, neither of my parents were even born yet, and I’m a man approaching 50 at a distressingly rapid rate. In three of its last four playoff appearances, Cleveland met its demise courtesy of the Yankees. So, of course, the Guardians’ path to the World Series runs through New York; eliminating the Yankees surely would elicit an extra dose of satisfaction.

But who will come out on top? I usually start with the ZiPS projections, because it would be an awfully strange approach to not use the projection system I have on my PC.

There will no doubt be some shifting as the series progresses, but I don’t think ZiPS would have a change in the basic story: These teams are fairly well-matched. All seven projected games stay within that 55/45 split, so it would be tough to call anyone a significant underdog. ZiPS is going a bit against the grain here; it was one of the outliers in liking the Guardians in the preseason.

So, where are the imbalances in this matchup?

The Yankees have the edge on offense because of their talent at the top of their lineup. Yes, José Ramírez is my pick for the most underrated player of this generation, someone who should be seen as a probable Hall of Famer despite rarely getting anywhere near the commensurate attention nationally. But he’s the Guardians’ only elite offensive talent, and we’re putting him up against Aaron Judge and Juan Soto at their peaks, which is a whole different tier of awesomeness. Looking at the Judge/Soto projections vs. Cleveland’s pitching makes clear just how perilous that portion of the Yankees lineup is going to be for the Guardians.

ZiPS thinks enough of Emmanuel Clase to make Judge mortal and thinks Matthew Boyd is just a good enough starter with a lefty split to stymie Soto a skosh. But you can’t avoid these two, and the Guardians don’t have any comparable sources of terror in their lineup. There’s a part of me that wonders if every team should use a solid reliever as an opener against the Yankees if it has a deep enough bullpen, simply because of the certainty of facing Judge and Soto in the first inning.

The drop-off after Judge and Soto is tremendous, however. Of the remaining seven hitters, ZiPS expects Gleyber Torres to have the highest on-base percentage (.335) and Giancarlo Stanton to be the only one with a slugging percentage above .450 (.462) against Cleveland’s lefty pitchers. Against righties, Jazz Chisholm Jr. has the highest projected OBP (.326) and SLG (.443) in the non-Judge/Soto department.

This gives the Guardians some interesting tactical possibilities using their bullpen. With the Yankees having two players with an unusually large proportion of their offensive firepower, it should be a bit easier for the Guards to sprinkle in lesser relievers based on just where they are in the lineup.

The difference between the rotations aren’t as large as one might think. While ZiPS thinks the Guardians have one of the weaker rotations in the playoffs this year, after Gerrit Cole – the best projected starter on either team – the Yankees aren’t all that frightening either. Carlos Rodón has the next best projection, but the Guardians have had a notable platoon split that favors matchups against lefties this season. Luis Gil is having a great rookie season and ought to appear prominently on most AL Rookie of the Year ballots, but ZiPS still sees him as a guy with an expected ERA someone around four, with Clarke Schmidt faring slightly worse.

Cleveland’s rotation finished 2024 with a 4.40 ERA and a 4.51 FIP, both toward the bottom of baseball. But the rotation isn’t that bad, simply because it has largely eliminated most of the sources of this lousiness. None of Carlos Carrasco, Triston McKenzie, or Logan Allen will face off against the Yankees this upcoming week. When looking at the four starters most likely to get starts for the Guardians, ZiPS sees Gavin Williams as the one with the highest projected ERA (4.17). ZiPS is less enamored with emergency options like Ben Lively and Joey Cantillo, but still has both of them on the sunny side of a 4.50 ERA/FIP. Cleveland’s starters don’t have a lot of pizazz, but like the breadsticks at Olive Garden, they’re serviceable and there’s a lot of them. Because they Guardians have a deep rotation, they don’t need to cobble together bullpen games just to survive, which allows manager Stephen Vogt to comfortably utilize the best projected bullpen in baseball right now in the highest-leverage situations.

For the Dodgers-Padres NLDS preview, I ran a simulation for how the probability changed if both teams had a game in which the starting pitcher got knocked out after two innings and the teams played one 15-inning game. In that one, the Padres gained five percentage points in the projection based on this scenario. The Guardians, meanwhile, gain 10 percentage points if we use the same two hypothetical events, going from slight underdogs at 47% to a mildly comfortable favorite at 57%!

Cleveland’s other advantage is having the better bench. The Guardians have myriad platoon options — David Fry or Jhonkensy Noel against lefties or Will Brennan and Kyle Manzardo against righties — and being able to deploy them for the right matchups is a small but real bit of value. Combine bench and bullpen and ZiPS thinks the Guardians have the edge in one-run games by a 54%-46% margin and a 52%-48% edge in games decided by two runs. Blowouts are most likely to go in the Yankees’ favor, but in those hard-fought close contests, the Yankees are slight underdogs.

The Yankees or Guardians will not face a juggernaut in the World Series if they make it through the ALCS. The Mets have some significant team weaknesses, and injuries have resulted in the Dodgers’ being kept together with a roll of duct tape. Whichever team wins these next (up to) seven games has a good chance of finally ending its title drought.

Even in an era brimming with colorful characters and exceptional hurlers, Luis Tiant stood out. The barrel-chested, mustachioed Cuban righty combined an assortment of exaggerated deliveries with a variety of arm angles and speeds that baffled hitters — and tantalized writers — over the course of a 19-year major league career (1964–82) and an affiliation with the game in one capacity or another that extended through the remainder of his life. “The Cuban Dervish,” as Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite christened him in 1975, died last Tuesday at the age of 83. No cause of death was announced.

The son of a legendary left-hander colloquially known as Luis Tiant Sr., the younger Tiant was exiled from his home country in the wake of Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro’s travel restrictions, and separated from his family for 14 years. Against that backdrop of isolation, “El Tiante” went on to become the winningest Cuban-born pitcher in major league history, and to emerge as a larger-than-life character, so inseparable from his trademark cigars that he chomped them even in postgame showers. He spoke softly in a thick accent, but that didn’t prevent his wit and wisdom from getting across, particularly during the latter half of his career, after he emerged from a serious arm injury to become a top big-game pitcher. “In boots, black cap, foot-long cigar and nothing else, he’d hold court with half-hour monologues Richard Pryor would envy,” wrote Thomas Boswell in 1988.

Tiant’s ascendence to iconic status centered around his 1971–78 run with the Red Sox, reaching its pinnacle in their seven-game 1975 World Series defeat, during which he made three starts: a brilliant Game 1 shutout; a gritty Game 4 complete game during which he delivered “163 pitches in 100 ways,” to use the description of Sports Illustrated‘s Roy Blount Jr.; and a valiant, draining Game 6 effort where he faltered late but was saved by Carlton Fisk’s famous body-English home run around Fenway Park’s left field foul pole in the 12th inning. Read the rest of this entry »

In an postseason era marked by aggressive bullpen usage and pitching staff chaos, Gerrit Cole delivered a fantastic seven-inning performance on Thursday night to lead the Yankees past the Royals and into the ALCS. The final score of 3-1 makes the game appear closer than it actually felt; the Royals really only threatened once or twice all night thanks to an efficient Cole and a pair of scoreless relief appearances.

For the second time in the series, Cole racked up only four strikeouts in his outing, but this one was undeniably better than his shaky start in Game 1. On Thursday night, he gave up one run on six hits and didn’t walk anyone. The Royals’ approach was pretty clear from the get-go: They aggressively attacked his four-seam fastball and cutter early in the count, hoping to ambush him as they did in Game 1 — when their first five balls in play were all hit over 100 mph — before he could turn to his curveball or slider. This kept his pitch count down; he needed just 87 pitches to complete his seven innings. The BABIP gods must have turned away from the Royals because they didn’t earn their first hit until the third inning, and only once did they collect multiple hits in the same inning. As in the series opener, Kansas City made a lot of loud contact against Cole — 12 of the 22 balls in play off him registered an exit velocity of at least 95 mph — but this time half of those hard-hit balls were either on the ground (5) or popped up (1); in Game 1, all but one of his 11 hard-hit balls (out of 17 BIP) were line drives (5) or fly balls (5).

The Yankees batters were just as aggressive while facing Michael Wacha for the second time in this series. Gleyber Torres laced a double into left-center field on the game’s first pitch, and Juan Soto brought him home with an RBI single two pitches later.

Wacha settled down after inducing a double play from Aaron Judge and cruised through the next three innings. The Yankees struck again in the fifth when Torres chipped in with a two-out, run-scoring single that chased Wacha from the game. Right then, with runners on the corners, Soto due up, and his team down two runs, Royals manager Matt Quatraro turned to closer Lucas Erceg to get out of the fifth-inning jam. Soto got under a second-pitch changeup and skied it to center field for the final out of the frame.

Erceg came back out for the sixth to face Judge, who entered the plate appearance 1-for-12 in the series with four walks and five strikeouts; that lone hit was an 86.6-mph infield single in New York’s Game 2 loss. This time, though, Judge finally barreled one up, ripping a double into the left-center field gap. Catcher Austin Wells moved Judge over to third with a groundout to second, bringing up Giancarlo Stanton, whose career 160 wRC+ in the postseason ranks 12th among players with at least 100 playoff plate appearances. He scorched a 116.9-mph single up the middle to drive in the Yankees’ third and final run of the game.

Tensions rose a bit in the bottom of the sixth after the Yankees turned a 3-6 double play and Maikel Garcia took issue with the tag from Anthony Volpe at second.

After the play, Garcia started jawing with Jazz Chisholm Jr., causing both benches to clear and their bullpens to empty. No punches were thrown; they mostly just milled around second base for a few minutes. After the game, Chisholm said that he felt like Garica slid into second too hard and was sticking up for Volpe.

“I just felt like he tried to go and injure Volpe because he was being a sore loser. He was talking a lot on Instagram and Twitter and stuff. I do the same thing, but I’m not gonna go and try and injure somebody if they’re winning a game, and I didn’t like that. So I told him we don’t do that on this side, and I’m always gonna stick up for my guys.”

Chisholm became a lightning rod during this series. First, he scored the go-ahead run in Game 1 after a controversial safe call on his successful steal of second base. Then, following the Yankees’ Game 2 loss, he said the Royals “just got lucky.” That earned him a cold reception in Kansas City on Wednesday for Game 3, and the boos continued in Game 4. I’m sure this incident won’t help his reputation with the Kansas City faithful.

After all the hubbub died down, the Royals finally got on the board with a couple of two-out hits. Bobby Witt Jr. drove a single to right, and then scored from first on a long double off the bat of Vinnie Pasquantino.

The Royals gave the Yankees one final scare in the seventh; with two outs and a runner on first, Kyle Isbel launched a 370-foot fly ball to deep right field that fell just shy of leaving the yard. The batted ball had an expected batting average of .510 and would have been a game-tying home run in 24 ballparks, including Yankee Stadium, but Kauffman Stadium wasn’t one of them. Soto made the catch up against the wall. Inning over.

Turns out, so was Cole’s night. He finished with just six total swings and misses, five off his four-seamer and one with his curveball. More than half of the pitches he threw were four-seamers, but he didn’t really have great command of the pitch; just 52% of his four-seamers were in the strike zone, and most of his misses with it were high. It didn’t really matter much because the Royals weren’t willing to be patient and the rest of Cole’s repertoire was more than effective.

An interesting note about Cole’s pitch mix in Game 4: It was the first time in his major league career, spanning 336 starts in both the regular season and the playoffs, that he did not throw a slider. His usage of that breaking ball dipped a bit this year, falling from a little over 20% last year to just 14.6% this season, but it’s still pretty surprising to see him completely turn away from one of his best swing-and-miss offerings in a huge playoff game.

After Cole exited the game, Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver shut down the Royals in the eighth and ninth innings. Weaver earned his third save of the series, and the Yankees relief corps finished the ALDS without allowing an earned run across 15 2/3 innings.

For the Royals, this series ends their incredible turnaround season. It’s a bummer for them, though they head into the offseason with some hope that their winning ways might continue. They improved by 30 wins this year, they have an MVP candidate signed long term to build around, and their youngsters now have some postseason experience under their belts.

But this series also exposed some of the cracks they’ll need to address in the offseason. Witt Jr. collected just two hits in the series, preventing him from making much of an impact on the proceedings, while Pasquantino’s RBI double on Thursday was his first and only hit of the series. That’s not to put the blame on them; during a short series, sometimes your best players go cold. Sure, the Royals did get a bit of production from other members of their lineup earlier in the series, and Tommy Pham collected three hits in Game 4, but this is an offense that had the 40-year-old Yuli Gurriel — who has an 82 wRC+ over the last three seasons — batting fifth. The Royals simply didn’t have enough offensive firepower to compete with New York.

With the win, the Yankees advance to the ALCS for the second time in the last three years and the fourth time in the last eight. But despite their run of excellence for the better part of a decade, they have not reached the World Series since they won it all in 2009. To get there, they’ll have to beat the winner of the Guardians-Tigers series, which is set for a win-or-go-home Game 5 on Saturday night. The Yankees are the best remaining American League team; we’ll see whether that’s enough for them to win the pennant.

After Jazz Chisholm Jr. told reporters, “They just got lucky,” in reference to the Royals’ 4-2 win over the Yankees in Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday night, some teams might have pinned that quote to their figurative bulletin boards and set out to earn a decisive win in front of their home crowd in Game 3. In its full context, Chisholm Jr.’s quote focused more on the Yankees’ missing opportunities to positively impact the game than actually discrediting the play of the Royals, but along with their elite athlete genes, pro ballplayers carry a special gene that allows them to get 27 varieties of riled up over even the smallest perceived slight.

Aaron Boone, former player and current manager of the Yankees, knows this as well as anyone and tried to throw water on his third baseman’s incendiary comments during his own session with the media, saying: “I don’t think they got lucky. I think they did a lot of really good things, and came in here and beat us.” Boone went on to reframe the issue as the Yankees’ getting unlucky on some hard-hit batted balls, which sounds better in theory but still attributes some randomness to the Royals’ win.

Wednesday night opened in Kansas City with a sea of fans adorned in royal blue booing their lungs out as Chisholm Jr. was introduced to the crowd at Kauffman Stadium. He soaked in the moment with a wide smile and seemed to mouth, “I love it” multiple times as the vengeful cries rained down around him. However, by evening’s end the masses fell silent. The Yankees emerged victorious with a 3-2 win over the Royals to carry a 2-1 series lead into Game 4 on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Carlos Rodón was dealing… until he wasn’t. Fired up for his first postseason start as a Yankee, with a sellout crowd of 48,034 cheering him on, the 31-year-old lefty avoided the early pitfalls that had characterized his uneven season by turning in two very strong innings, including a 12-pitch, three-strikeout first. But after the Royals showed they could produce hard contact against him in the third, they chased him from the game with a four-run fourth, starting with a solo shot by his old nemesis, Salvador Perez, and then a trio of hits. While Rodón’s opposite number, Cole Ragans, only lasted four innings himself, the Royals bullpen stymied the Yankees, who collected just two hits across a four-inning stretch before showing signs of life again in the ninth. Their rally died out, and the Royals pulled off a 4-2 win in Monday night’s Game 2, sending the best-of-five series back to Kansas City with the two teams even at one win apiece.

After making just 14 starts in an injury-plagued 2023 season — his first under a six-year, $162 million deal, Rodón took the ball for a full complement of 32 starts, a career first — and threw a staff-high 175 innings, albeit with a 3.95 ERA and 4.39 FIP. While he ranked sixth in the AL in strikeout rate (26.5%) and ninth in K-BB% (18.8%), he was one of the most gopher-prone starters in the league, serving up 1.59 homers per nine, third highest among qualifiers. What particularly tripped up Rodón was a pronounced tendency to struggle early. He posted a 5.63 ERA and 4.92 FIP in the first and second innings while allowing 14 homers in those 64 frames, compared to a 3.00 ERA and 4.09 FIP thereafter.

On Monday he looked untouchable in the first. He caught Maikel Garcia looking at a 95.7-mph four-seamer in the lower third, whiffed Bobby Witt Jr. chasing the high cheese, and got Vinnie Pasquantino to fan chasing an outside slider in the dirt. His only blemish in the second inning was a two-out single by Michael Massey, which he negated by punching out Tommy Pham chasing a low-and-away changeup. Through two innings, he’d thrown 20 pitches, 18 for strikes, with four whiffs. Read the rest of this entry »

Hang it in the Louvre:

Oh, and this one too:

The playoffs were absolutely wild this weekend. Out of the six games played Saturday and Sunday, two were all-time classics. First, the Yankees and Royals traded blows before Alex Verdugo produced a game-winning single after a controversial stolen base call. Then the Phillies and Mets traded home runs and blown leads right up until the last play of the game, Nick Castellanos’s walk-off hit.

If you wanted to, you could read our game stories for these games, or any number of other fine pieces about them across the internet. You could watch highlights or condensed recaps. But this is FanGraphs, so I thought I’d cover another angle: where these games fit in the history of wild playoff games.

We have win probability charts going back to 2002, which means we have data on total win probability changes going back to that year as well. If you take the absolute value of these and sum them up, you can see exactly how much each team’s fortunes changed throughout the contest. The more total win probability changes, the wilder things are. For example, the least exciting game by this measure occurred on October 9, 2019. The Cardinals beat the Braves 13-1 in the NLDS, and they opened things up by scoring 10 in the first inning. No drama, and thus very few changes in win probability. A 2023 contest between the Diamondbacks and Dodgers (11-2 Arizona, 9-0 after two innings) is the runner up.
Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Let’s just get this out of the way up top: Jazz Chisholm Jr. should have been called out at second base.

The replay review of his seventh-inning stolen base showed that his foot had not yet touched the bag when Royals second baseman Michael Massey applied the tag. Chisholm then scored the go-ahead run on Alex Verdugo’s single to left field, and the Yankees won a somewhat sloppy, back-and-forth Game 1 of the American League Division Series, 6-5, on Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.

“They just said there was nothing clear and convincing to overturn it,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said Sunday morning, after he asked MLB why the call on the field was not reversed. “If he had been called out, that call would have stood too.” Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Alex Verdugo spent the last five months of the 2024 season dragging down the Yankees’ offense, so much so that in the season’s closing weeks, the team gave an abbreviated look to 21-year-old top prospect Jasson Domínguez. Not until late Friday night did word leak that manager Aaron Boone would stick with Verdugo to start the Division Series opener against the Royals, but the 28-year-old left fielder made the decision look brilliant. In a seesaw battle that included runs in every inning from the second through the seventh — creating five lead changes, a postseason first — Verdugo sparked a pair of two-run rallies with a third-inning single and sixth-inning walk, made a sparkling defensive play with a sliding catch to end the fourth, and drove in the decisive run in the seventh in the Yankees’ 6-5 win.

“He didn’t have his best season this year, but he’s gonna show you guys that this is his time,” said Jazz Chisholm Jr. “This is what he’s made for.”

During the regular season, Verdugo hit just .233/.291/.356 for an 83 wRC+, the ninth-lowest mark of any qualifier, and from May 1 on, he hit an even more dismal .225/.275/.336 for a 72 wRC+, the fourth-lowest of any qualifier. Nonetheless, Boone stuck with him through thick and thin, and the Yankees initially bypassed an opportunity to recall Domínguez — whose season included rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and then an oblique strain — when rosters expanded on September 1. They eventually called up Domínguez on September 9, and he started 15 of the team’s final 19 games, including eight out of the last 10 in left field while Verdugo sat.

But unlike last year, when he homered four times in eight games before tearing his right UCL, Domínguez scuffled at the plate (.179/.313/.304, 84 wRC+), leaving the door open for Verdugo. He was ready when Boone called his number, a decision that owed plenty to his familiarity with Yankee Stadium’s spacious left field and the way Domínguez, regularly a center fielder, struggled when shifted over to the less familiar position. “Obviously Alex has been tremendous for us out there defensively, and even though it’s been up and down for him in the second half, especially offensively, I still feel like there’s a really good hitter in there that can provide something for us at the bottom,” said Boone before Game 1. Read the rest of this entry »

It would be easy to look at what happened across the two American League Wild Card Series as the best possible outcome for the Yankees. The Astros, the team that had made it to the ALCS in each of the last seven seasons and eliminated New York three times to advance to the World Series in that span, saw their season end after losing to the Tigers; meanwhile, the Orioles, the Yankees’ up-and-coming division rivals who gave them fits all season, were bounced in Baltimore by the Royals.

That’s right, the two biggest AL threats to the Yankees this postseason were knocked out in the first round. To paraphrase manager Aaron Boone, it’s all right there in front of them. Indeed, their path to their first World Series appearance in 15 years is a bit clearer, in the sense that neither their past nemesis nor their latest challenger is standing in their way.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The Astros look more like the decaying New Rome of Megalopolis than the burgeoning empire that ransacked the AL for the better part of a decade, and Baltimore’s nearly completed rebuild still hasn’t gotten off the ground in October. Besides, the Royals are pretty good in their own right. They have a trio of excellent starting pitchers atop their rotation and a strong group of high-leverage relievers. They run the bases well and are either the best or one of the best defensive teams in the majors. And then there’s shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., a true five-tool player who posted 10.4 WAR this year and has carried Kansas City further than almost anyone could’ve expected when the season began.

To keep going, they will have to overcome the Yankees, who had the best record in the AL and won five of their seven games against the Royals this season. Kansas City’s first chance to do so comes Saturday night, when veteran right-hander Michael Wacha takes on reigning Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole in Game 1 of the ALDS at Yankee Stadium.

It certainly won’t be easy. The Yankees enter this weekend with the best odds of any AL team to win the World Series. Perhaps that makes sense, considering New York won’t have to go through Houston this time, but there’s a more specific explanation for why the Yankees are the team to beat this postseason: This is the best team they’ve had in years.

Wait, these Yankees, who won 94 games and were the second-worst team in baseball for six weeks, are better than the 100-win teams of 2018 and ’19? And the 2022 club that won 99 games? Even the upstart Baby Bombers squad in 2017, the one that many fans still claim would’ve won it all if not for the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme? Really? Sure!

Why? The main and most obvious reason is that the Yankees are no longer just the Aaron Judge show. They have two MVP-caliber talents batting back-to-back in their lineup, and somehow, describing Judge and Juan Soto as “MVP-caliber talents” doesn’t quite encapsulate their excellence or their importance to the Yankees. Think of it this way: The Yankees have both the best hitter in baseball since Barry Bonds and the second coming of Ted Williams. Or put another way, Judge and Soto are the second pair of teammates ever to finish with at least 8 WAR and a 175 or better wRC+. The first pair? Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who did it a ridiculous four times (1927-28, 1930-31).

The rest of New York’s lineup is, at best, inconsistent, but that was the case in prior seasons, too, when Judge was the only player around. In 2022, for example, excluding Judge, the Yankees were roughly league average at the plate (102 wRC+); this season, the Yankees have a 104 wRC+ without Judge. That isn’t much better, but consider where they would be without both Judge and Soto; excluding them, New York hitters have combined for a 92 wRC+. The point here is that the Yankees now have two elite players to lean on instead of just one, and if either Judge or Soto goes cold, the team still has one of the top three hitters in baseball to pick up the slack.

Also, it’s worth noting that Boone acknowledged earlier this week that Judge was pretty banged up during the 2022 postseason, which probably contributed to his struggles (35 wRC+ in nine games); before that year, Judge had a 126 wRC+ across 160 postseason plate appearances. Boone also said both Judge and Soto enter this postseason about as healthy as any player can be after playing a six-month season.

Beyond Judge and Soto, the Yankees also have Giancarlo Stanton, who seemingly levels up when the calendar turns to October. Since joining the Yankees, Stanton is slashing .297/.373/.734 with nine home runs, a .443 wOBA, and a 186 wRC+ over his 75 postseason plate appearances. Additionally, there’s second baseman Gleyber Torres, who had a disappointing contract year this season; he finished with a .257/.330/.378 line, 15 home runs, a 104 wRC+, and 1.7 WAR — all down from his resurgent 2023 campaign. That said, those numbers are pretty remarkable considering how poorly Torres played over the first few months of the season. Entering the All-Star break, he had an 88 wRC+ and 0.3 WAR across 93 games and 380 plate appearances; over his 61 games (285 PA) since then, he has a 124 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR.

The arrival of Jazz Chisholm Jr., for whom the Yankees traded in late July, coincided with their turnaround after their six-week slide. Playing all but 14 of his innings with the Yankees at third base, a position he’d never played professionally before, Chisholm helped shake the team out of its midsummer snooze. With the Yankees, he batted .273/.325/.500 with 11 home runs, 18 steals, and a 132 wRC+ over 191 plate appearances. Thanks to that offense and stellar defense at the hot corner (6 OAA), Chisholm had 2.3 WAR during his 46 games with the Yankees.

This lineup still has plenty of questions, though. Rookie catcher and cleanup hitter Austin Wells had a dreadful September, when he hit for a 22 wRC+ across 83 plate appearances. That probably has something to do with fatigue; through the end of August, Wells slashed .259/.348/.447 with a 126 wRC+. He hasn’t played since the Yankees locked up the no. 1 seed last Saturday, so we’ll see if he rebounds following a week of rest.

The Yankees also have a significant hole in left field, where Alex Verdugo played most of the season and was one of the 10 worst hitters in the majors (83 wRC+). More recently, Jasson Domínguez has started in left, but he’s looked shaky in the field and hasn’t hit much either, though his 84 wRC+ has come in a much smaller sample. Boone has not yet committed to playing one over the other.

Despite the struggles of some players, the Yankees were one of the best hitting teams in baseball overall, ranking third in runs (815), second in wRC+ (117), and first in home runs (237). They’ll face a Royals pitching staff that was one of the best in the majors. Kansas City ranked seventh in ERA (3.76), fourth in FIP (3.76), and third in WAR (20.2). The Royals rotation was especially excellent this season, with a 3.55 ERA and 16.7 WAR, both of which ranked second among all big league rotations.

Their top three starters deserve much of the credit for their success. Cole Ragans, who threw six scoreless innings in Game 1 of the Wild Card round and would’ve kept going if he hadn’t started cramping, broke out this season with a 3.14 ERA, a 2.99 FIP, and 4.9 WAR over 186 1/3 innings — more than 50 innings above his previous career high at any professional level. That workload could become an issue, though. As Ben Clemens noted in his AL Wild Card Series preview, “He’s been walking more opponents and striking out fewer of them in August and September; only a mid-.200s BABIP has kept his ERA from reflecting it.” Ragans is slated to start Game 2 on Monday.

Seth Lugo wasn’t at his best against the Orioles on Tuesday even though he allowed just one run on five hits and struck out six. He labored most of the night and looked gassed when he was removed with one out in the fifth. At 34, Lugo just completed the best season of his career, one that should earn him a top-five finish in the Cy Young voting. He had a 3.00 ERA, a 3.25 FIP, and 4.7 WAR across 33 starts and a whopping 206 2/3 innings, the second most in the majors. One of those starts came last month in the Bronx, when Lugo silenced the Yankees across seven scoreless innings; he struck out 10, walked none, and gave up just three hits. After that start, Jay Jaffe went into depth on Lugo, and I’d encourage you to check out that piece if you haven’t already. Lugo will start Game 3 on Wednesday in Kansas City.

That leaves Wacha, KC’s Game 1 starter, who is having his best season (3.35 ERA, 3.65 FIP, 3.3 WAR, 166 2/3 IP) since at least 2017. Like Lugo, Wacha revived his career last year in the Padres’ rotation and turned that into a multi-year deal with the Royals. In his Wild Card preview, Ben also compared the two Royals veterans to describe Wacha, whom he said “is like Lugo with the volume turned down 5%. He throws a ton of pitches, but his only plus offering is the changeup that made him famous back in his St. Louis days.” Another thing about Wacha? He’s held Judge to just one single and three walks with 11 strikeouts in the 21 times he’s faced the Yankees slugger during his career, for whatever that small sample is worth.

Like the Royals, the Yankees have a deep rotation. Cole missed the team’s first 75 games with an elbow injury, and his first seven starts were the work of a rusty pitcher who might have returned to the mound too quickly. Since the beginning of August, though, Cole has a 2.25 ERA and a 2.62 FIP across 10 starts (60 innings), and for the most part, he’s been even better than those numbers suggest during that stretch. Seven of the 15 earned runs he’s allowed in that span came in his bizarre September 14 start against the Red Sox, when he intentionally walked Rafael Devers with the bases empty. What’s more, only two of the 11 home runs hit off him this year have come within the past two months (in fact, those two homers came in the same start, on August 27 against the Nationals).

Cole is set to start Game 1 on Saturday, followed by Carlos Rodón in Game 2 on Monday. Boone has not yet announced who will get the ball in Wednesday’s Game 3 in Kansas City, but it will most likely be either Clarke Schmidt or Luis Gil, with the other one, along with Marcus Stroman, relegated to the bullpen.

During the second half of the season, Rodón looked more like the pitcher the Yankees thought they were getting when they signed him to a six-year, $162 million deal before the 2023 season. Over his 12 starts since the All-Star break, he is 7-2 with a 2.91 ERA, 3.93 FIP, and 3.67 xFIP. Home runs were his biggest problem this season; his 1.59 HR/9 was the fourth-highest rate among major league starters.

For his part, Schmidt (2.85 ERA, 3.58 FIP, 85 1/3 IP) has been the best Yankees starter on a rate basis this season, but he missed more than three months with a lat strain and has not been as strong since returning from the injured list. After posting a 2.52 ERA and a 3.53 FIP during his first 11 starts (60 2/3 IP), he had a 3.65 ERA and a 3.69 FIP in 24 2/3 innings across his five September starts.

Gil, a Rookie of the Year candidate, dominated during his first 14 starts of the season (2.03 ERA, 3.06 FIP, 80 IP) and anchored the Yankees rotation while Cole was on the shelf. He then looked completely lost for three starts — allowing 16 runs in just 9 2/3 innings — before rounding into form again after making an adjustment to his pitch mix. Over the first half of the season, Gil was mainly a fastball/changeup guy who also had a slider; that worked for the most part. But in early July, after his third straight clunker, he started leaning on his slider more, with his changeup becoming his third pitch.

With the way the ALDS schedule works out — an off day Sunday and then travel days on Tuesday and, if necessary, Friday — both teams will need only three starters to get through the best-of-five series.

Witt is by far the most threatening hitter the Yankees’ staff will face in a lineup that is otherwise fairly light on impact batters. Salvador Perez, who is somehow only 34 years old, is coming off a solid season in which he hit 27 home runs and had a 115 wRC+ while splitting his time between catcher and first base. Expect him to be behind the plate for the entire ALDS as long as first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino remains healthy enough to be in the lineup. Pasquantino, who hit 19 homers and had a 108 wRC+ this season, recently returned from a broken right thumb.

The Yankees bullpen is their biggest question heading into this series. Luke Weaver made a point to say earlier this week that he does not consider himself to be the team’s closer, even though Boone has turned to him in save situations instead of Clay Holmes, who was displaced as the closer last month. No matter what you call Weaver’s role, there’s no denying that he’s been the most impactful Yankees reliever this year. Over 62 appearances spanning 84 innings, he has a 2.89 ERA, a 3.33 FIP, and 1.0 WAR.

Holmes has blown a league-high 13 saves this season, but overall, he’s been solid: 3.14 ERA, 3.02 FIP, 63 IP. Some of his woes can be attributed to bad luck. As David Laurila detailed today, Holmes is still a groundball pitcher, but far more of the fly balls he’s allowed this season have been hit for home runs (11.8%, up from last year’s 7.1%). Opponents also have a .322 BABIP against him; that’s the highest it’s been in a full season. The Yankees’ bullpen also includes righties Tommy Kahnle (2.11 ERA, 4.01 FIP) and Ian Hamilton (3.82 ERA, 3.03 FIP), and lefty Tim Hill, who has a 2.05 ERA and 3.62 FIP in 44 innings since coming over from the White Sox in June.

Closer Lucas Erceg has anchored the Kansas City bullpen since the Royals traded for him at the end of July, and he’s been better than they could’ve expected when they acquired him. Michael Rosen just wrote about what makes Erceg special, and I’ll refer you to his piece rather than going into depth here. Lefty Kris Bubic, their second-best reliever, is also excellent; he struck out 32.2% of the batters he faced this season while posting a 2.67 ERA and 1.95 FIP over 30 1/3 innings. The Royals also feature relievers John Schreiber, a righty, and lefty Angel Zerpa, who replaced Lugo on Wednesday with one out in the fifth to escape a bases-loaded jam. For the first out he recorded, Zerpa threw a sinker that was so nasty that Colton Cowser swung at it even though it hit him.

It’s going to be a fun series. The Yankees are the better team, but the Royals, to quote the face of their franchise, “didn’t come this far just to come this far.” He added, “We’re going to keep getting after it, keep trying to create our own legacy.” What exactly that legacy turns out to be remains to be seen.