Written by Anthony Castrovince at MLB.com
In this brave new world in which the Indians — the team with the longest World Series championship drought of any in baseball — are the established postseason juggernaut and the Yankees — the team with more championships than any team in baseball — are the unexpected October entrant, an intriguing and attractive American League Division Series presented by Doosan awaits.
The Indians got to today’s Game 1 at Progressive Field pretty much as expected, living up to their promise and potential in the wake of last year’s crushing World Series Game 7 loss to the Cubs with an all-in effort that included the famous 22-game win streak and a not-so-random roll to the AL Central title. The Yankees, on the other hand, got here arguably ahead of schedule, largely on the back of an insane rookie season from Aaron Judge, whose huge home run helped seal an 8-4 AL Wild Card Game win over the Twins on Tuesday night.
Regardless of how they got here, what they bring us is a matchup of loaded lineups, bruising bullpens and a little personal history mixed in.
Maybe the midges from the 2007 ALDS between these two teams will even make an appearance for old time’s sake.
“It’s an exciting time,” Yankees starter Sonny Gray said. “It’s going to be an exciting game.”
With all due respect to Gray and the Tribe’s surprise Game 1 starter Trevor Bauer, it seems bullpens will be a clear key to this series. The Indians are so confident in the depth of their staff that they’ve opted to push AL Cy Young Award favorite Corey Kluber to Game 2. The expectation is that Bauer will essentially share the game with a deep Tribe ‘pen in which would-be starters Danny Salazar and Mike Clevinger and superb setup man — and former Yankee — Andrew Miller can shorten things up.
“We’re going to get to our bullpen if we have a lead,” manager Terry Francona said. Gray made his Yankees debut against the Indians in this building in August. The Yanks will also turn to former Tribe ace CC Sabathia in Game 2. But as the Yankees demonstrated in the wild Wild Card Game, in which starter Luis Severino recorded only one out and Chad Green, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle and Aroldis Chapman combined to allow just one run the rest of the way, they can win even if they don’t get a strong performance from their starter.
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