HOUSTON — You have seen this before.
The Yankees and Astros played a close game. Houston finished with more runs.
Rinse, repeat. This two-step is especially true at this time of year and at Minute Maid Park. The Yankees’ Groundhog’s Day is swathed in orange towels and Lone Star flags waving. Take your choice in this matchup — the Astros are doing enough to win or the Yankees are doing enough to lose. But the outcome has an inevitability.
That is why the Yankee season has come down to this — Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes. On full rest. In The Bronx. The Yankees win Games 3 and 4 and perhaps they regain a puncher’s chance to avoid explaining the Astro-nomical — yet another elimination at Houston’s hands.
“Regardless, if it’s 2-0 or if it’s 1-1 or it’s 0-2, it just, it can’t affect the way I go about my business,” Cole said. “We all have a job to do. We play each and every game in and of itself, play each and every pitch within each and every game until there’s no more pitches to play, win or lose.”
The Yankees are running out of pitches in the 2022 season, largely because they are running out of hitters. That Andrew Benintendi and DJ LeMahieu never made it back and Matt Carpenter did, but in such limited form that he has struck out in all seven postseason at-bats has left the Yankee lineup limp.
Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg (2)They are hitting just .169 in seven postseason games. They overcame that malaise to overcome the Guardians in the ALDS. But the Guardians come from the Yankee punching bag, the AL Central. Against Houston, the Yankees are the punching bag. They have nine hits and four runs in losing both games at Minute Maid, including a 3-2 loss in Game 2.
When asked about what needs to be done when you know your offense is not likely to generate much, Cole said, “I feel like I should probably dedicate all my focus to the Houston hitters, really. That’s probably the best way to combat that.”
Perhaps, being home will help. The Yanks are now 1-8 in the playoffs at Minute Maid (all since 2017), managing 13 runs in the losses. So, Game 2 was familiar.
The two runs Thursday were unearned, assisted by a double error against Houston starter Framber Vladez in the fourth inning. That got the Yankees within 3-2. That is where it stayed. From Gleyber Torres’ RBI infield single that brought the Yankees within a run to Carpenter’s game-ending, pinch-hit whiff, the Yankees sent up 18 batters and produced one single, one walk, one hit by pitch and 11 strikeouts.
So now the Yanks have to win four out of five against a team that is 7-2 against them this year. Against a team that with each pitch and each inning just performs as if it knows it is superior. That it possess the answer key to any Yankee test.
Luis Severino heads back to the dugout after being taken out of the game during the sixth inning of the Yankees’ 3-2 loss in Game 2 of the ALCS. N.Y. Post: Charles WenzelbergThe margin of victory in every one of the nine games this year has been three runs or fewer. The scores are close. But these teams have played 82 innings this year and the only two the Yankees have led after a completed inning came via walk-off hits by Aaron Judge in games on June 23 and 25.
Judge nearly hit a two-run go-ahead homer in the eighth Thursday. But his 106.3 mph dart died on the warning track. The Yanks believed the wind knocked it down. This was only the second game all year played with the roof open at Minute Maid. MLB has certain conditions, namely weather, by which they dictate open or closed. The Astros would prefer it shut to make it noisier indoors for the visitors. The Yanks, therefore, wanted it open.
Oh the irony. Alex Bregman’s 91.8 mph fly to left might have gained some windy assistance to reach the shallow Crawford Boxes in left for a three-run homer in the third for Houston’s only runs.
But the way this series has played out for years now, no one can think these games are coming down to air currents.
The Astros are outplaying the Yankees. So now all that stands between Houston beating the Yankees for the fourth time in the playoffs since 2015 are Cole on Saturday and Cortes on Sunday. The Yankees are 3-4 in these playoffs. Cole has won both of his starts. Cortes won an ALDS decisive Game 5 on three days’ rest.
Houston is just a gigantic step up from that work against Cleveland. Cole and Cortes, All-Stars both, are the Yankees’ best starters — also their last best chance to cancel the reruns of: Close games. Houston wins. The Yankees go home.
