MLB: American League Wild Card tidbits

The MLB playoffs officially begin this evening when the Minnesota Twins hit the road to take on the New York Yankees.

While both the Yankees and Twins are surprise entrants into this year’s MLB playoffs, New York had a decent chance to make it to October baseball when the season began, while the Twins–fresh off a 103-loss season–are the real Cinderella story of the American League.

The two clubs met just a couple of weeks ago at the same venue, and it was the Yankees that took all three games, outsicoring Minnesota 18-6. A large portion of that run differential came in the Yanks’ 11-3 win in the finale of that series.

While the Yankees have the better team on paper, the Twins have one ace at their disposal, and they’re using him. Ervin Santana has been thought of as trade bait over the past year or so, but the Twins have kept him around. His 16-8 record with a 3.28 ERA to go along with five complete games and three shutouts is a big reason why his team made it this far. The Twins have also ridden a scalding hot offense the past month, so it’s entirely possible that we could see a blowout one way or another tonight.

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For the Yankees, they’re sending Luis Severino (14-6, 2.98) to the mound, which would have terrified the Bronx faithful if they had that knowledge heading into the season. Masahiro Tanaka (13-12, 4.74) would have been the logical choice then, but even his much better night ERA of 3.93 leaves Severino as the better option.

The Yankees also have an insanely good bullpen to work with, holding the most fWAR among a group of relievers in baseball this year at 9.2, 0.6 wins more than second-place Cleveland. Aroldis Chapman, David Robertson and Dellin Betances all have closing experience, though if Joe Girardi can limit Betances’ usage in a one-game playoff it would probably be for the best with his high walk rate (6.52 BB/9) over the past month. Tommy Kahnle is another part of the bullpen monster for the later innings, but if Severino gets in trouble early, Chad Green could definitely be called upon to eat up some outs to bridge the gap to the back-end of the ‘pen.

As luck would have it, both starters for Tuesday’s game pitched in that series a couple of weeks ago. Severino went three frames and allowed three runs on five hits and a walk. That also ended up being the game that New York won 11-3.

Santana went 5 2/3 innings in his start, allowing two earned on seven hits and a walk. And yes, Aaron Judge took him deep. Greg Bird is 2-for-5 against him in his career with a pair of bombs. As a unit, the Yankees team has hit Santana pretty well in their careers, batting .270 with a .316 OBP and a .794 OPS.

In a much less reliable sample size, the Twins have hit .385 with a .429 OBP against Severino. Since the beginning of July, Luis Severino has lost just three games. All of those games have come against AL playoff participants. The good news (at least for now) is that the Twins are not one of those three. The Yankees have won the other 13 of his starts in that span, which bodes well for them this evening.

Next: A's: Looking ahead to 2018

The key for the Twins to pull out a victory will be Santana going deep into the game to hide the bullpen for as long as possible and for the offense to build up a little bit of a lead. The Yankees have the arms to shut a game down, so striking early is definitely a goal worth striving for.

For the Yankees, they have to realize that this game is no gimme. The Twins are a young team with nothing to lose and nobody is picking them to win. New York has all of the expectations on them, so now is the time that they’ll have to rise up and meet them or start waiting on next season to begin.

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