I don’t feel quite so bad about the Nats’ dumping Shawn Kelley…
And a solo homer from Stanton makes it 7-2.
I thought Boone did a good job managing last night. Getting Andujar off the field with the lead was a good idea. His defensive shortcomings in my opinion put him behind Torres for the Rookie of the Year. To me, the key ingredient in the stretch run and the postseason has been Luke Voit. As much potential as Bird seemed to have, I’m afraid he’s not going to live up to it. Voit does not seem to wilt in the limelight.
Severino could have gone 6 but for some borderline strikes that he didn’t get and some defensive lapses. The As strategy of having a bullpen pitched game didn’t quite work and I don’t think is a viable strategy. All it takes is one guy not having a good night and things can go south in a hurry.
Finally, Aaron Judge showed a lot of class post-game. The very first words out of his mouth were to congratulate the As on a very good season. Even Yankee-haters must agree this is a fine young man.
Well, the baseball world is breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone wanted a classic Yankee/Red Sox war, and now they are going to get it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the Yankees are the only 100 game winner that only managed to qualify as a wild card team. In 2015, the NL Central qualified all three teams. St. Louis won the division with, I believe 101 wins, and Pittsburg and the Cubs followed with 98 and 97 respectively, I believe.
I’ll take this opportunity to say the #1 seed should be able to pick their opponent in the playoffs. Cleveland’s no slouch, and the Sox can’t hit Kluber, but I think they’d be preferable over the Yankees. A lot will depend on Chris Sale. His average fastball velocity was 90mph in his last start, so that’s mildly concerning.
When you say “everyone,” do you mean “everyone in Boston and New York and the MLB executives and advertisers”? Because I’m guessing that very few people outside of those groups were hoping for any such thing. The saving grace is that they can’t meet each other in the WS. 
Not too many managers/GMs would actually want that in the end. The pressure to win escalates a lot if you get to pick your opponent. Can you imagine picking the Indians and then losing, especially if the Astros beat the Yanks again? Second guessed forever and heads would probably roll.
I don’t know if this is sarcastic, but I have no interest at all in another Yankees-Red Sox wankfest, and my honest impression is that most fans I know are quite uninterested. Fans outside the Boston-NY corridor generally don’t find it very compelling - if anything, it’s actually more boring than most such matchups, simply because the perception is they just buy their way in. (The perception isn’t entirely true, but it is what it is.)
I think people “inside” rivalries have a tendency to incorrectly assume tnhey matter outside the rivalrly. As a fan I am aware that fans of the Cubs and Cardinals, or Dodgers and Giants (or, if you want to look at other sports, Cowboys vs. Giants, Bears vs. Packers, etc etc) put a huge emotional weight on those rivalries, but outside of them, us other fans honestly don’t care.
By the way, I looked it up and no, the Yankees are not the first 100-win Wild Card team; the 2001 Oakland A’s were 102-60, but finished a distant second to the 116-win Mariners. The 2002 Angels just missed by one win, going 99-63 and winning the Wild Card. The 2004 Red Sox missed by two wins.
I feel dread and excitement all at once.
I find it hard to enjoy watching Voit play. He’s terrible defensively…he botched a double play and failed to scoop Andujar’s throw, a routine play for good first basemen. Then he gets a big hit but has to start styling at home plate. Run motherfucker, celebrate later. I really wish Bird didn’t suck.
Yes I was thinking that Texeira would have had a clean pick of Andujar’s throw, it wasn’t that bed. Severino deserved better than he got from the infield.
Yes I was a bit annoyed at Voit assuming the ball was gone. But I think he has the ability to improve his fielding more than Bird can improve his bat or his fragility.
I’m wondering if they still run the kangaroo court, Mo was the last Judge I knew of. I could see CC & Gardner running it though and knocking it into Voit’s head to never do the styling shit again.
I did see Judge congratulate Voit but then talk to him, hopefully he was doing the immediate addresses of the stupidity on display.
I’m sure Bird will have another spring training to try and win back his job, but his woes have really piled up at this point and it looks like he’ll never come close to the potential we saw.
What happened to the rule that the #1 wouldn’t play a wild card from their own division in the LDS?
I prefer to see them re-seed after the wildcard game. Best remaining record plays worst remaining.
ETA: Didn’t there used to be a rule about no divisional opponents play in the first round?
I think that went away with the introduction of the second wild card team.
That was the old rule.
I know I’ve bitched about this for years but I really hate the MLB.tv has blackout for ‘national’ games that I don’t have any access to. No I don’t have ESPN unless it’s on traditional broadcast let me watch it online. Then this year they make it worse. To watch the Dodgers I’ve got to have the MLB network that’s a premium package.
At this point I’m used to watching my playoff games the next morning just because I can’t stay up late enough and I don’t get the right channel but this morning I found out that if the game was on the MLB network they won’t let you watch the replay the next morning. So I may not to get any of the games even delayed for the Dodgers NLDS. At least I got to listen to the radio broadcast of the game last night.
I hear you. I refuse to do business with Spectrum, so I’m unable to watch any game that isn’t on a local station. SportsNetLA has effectively kept me from seeing more than a handful of games for years. I’m reduced to following the games with GameDay on the Dodgers website. Not the same.
Do foreign tv networks carry the game? Use a vpn to access them?
I’m sure it’s pirated somewhere online. I agree with you though on how annoying the blackout rules are.
My brother-in-law does something similar to get around the problem mentioned by
Silenus. I live in Colorado so in season blackouts aren’t really a problem and to be honest I’m totally ok watching games the next morning so normally it’s not an issue. Apparently just for games on MLB network you can’t watch them the next day my guess its to force you to buy another package from them which is crap since I’m already paying them directly.
Are mlbstreams.