Game 1 of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) was played last night at Minute Maid Park between the Yankees and Astros. While New York might have been feeling good coming off of a Game 5 ALDS win over Cleveland, they looked terrible last night. The Astros took Game 1 by a score of 4-2 and even though the scoreboard doesn’t reflect it… They pretty much dominated the night. My knock against this team (mainly all of Aaron Boone’s team’s) is they play with no heart. When adversity hit’s, they typically shut down and it’s game over. At the start of the season, people were drooling over this lineup/team and saying how they were going to be compared to the 1998 Yankees team… Blah blah blah. Once the All-Star break was over, this team was arguably the worst team in the MLB and even though they stopped the bleeding in September and were able to win the AL East… They have not been close to that same team from the first half of the season. My prediction for this ALCS was that Houston would win in 5 games (The only game NY would win, would be the game that Gerrit Cole started) but after watching this team play last night… They may be straight up swept. My reason for thinking this… In last nights game, the Yankees struck out 17 TIMES (in 35 plate appearances) compared to Houston who only struck out TWICE! The Yanks rely too much on the homerun ball (the only 2 runs that NY scored last night were on solo home runs by Harrison Bader and Anthony Rizzo). That timely RBI single when there are runners in scoring position has eluded this team.
As I said in my Game 5 recap post, the main difference between the Guardians (who NY just played) and the Astros is that Houston can match the Yankees power game and last night they did just that (Houston hit 3 solo homeruns) while their pitching was dominate. New York just does not matchup against Houston at all and I will die on this hill preaching that.
Get comfortable Yankees fans, until some major changes are made to this roster, the best this team will ever be is an ALCS roster.
Game Stats:
NYY 2 HOU 4
W- Justin Verlander (1-0, 6.30) : 6IP, 3H, 1R, 1ER, 1BB, 11K
L- Clarke Schmidt (0-2, 11.57) : 1IP, 2H, 2R, 2ER, 2BB, 0K
SV- Ryan Pressly (2) : 1.1IP, 0H, 0R, 0ER, 0BB, 3K
Game 2 of the Championship Series will be played Thursday Night in Houston. First pitch is scheduled for 7:37 pm EST and will be aired on TBS.
Luis Serverino will get the start for the Yankees and Framber Valdez will get the start for Houston.
(Game Stats are courtesy of MLB.com)
-Jason Harris