After 162 games, numerous broken records and 100 wins the New York Yankees host the Oakland Athletics tonight in the American League Wild Card Game.
It all comes down to this for both franchises as the winner moves on to play the Boston Red Sox in the divisional series starting on Friday while the loser goes home.
These two teams have been offensive juggernauts. This season the Yankees led the majors in home runs with a record-breaking 267, which broke the previous mark of 265 held by the 1997 Seattle Mariners.
The A’s weren’t far behind as they finished with just 40 fewer homers, which ranked third in the majors and second in the American League.
For the Yankees, five different players hit 27 or more homers, while Oakland had five with 23 or more homers. Slugger Khris Davis led the A’s as he hit 48 just by himself, ranking first in the majors, while outfielder Giancarlo Stanton finished the season with 38, which ranked 6th in the American League.
The Yankees had 12 players with at least 10 homers this season, an all-time record in the majors, while the Athletics had eight.
For the Yankees Luis Severino (19-8, 3.39) will take the mound against the Athletics’ Liam Hendricks who will be employed in an “opener” role for the first time in postseason history.
Hendricks is expected to throw for an inning or two before yielding his place on the mound to starters Edwin Jackson (6-3, 3.33) and a group of pitchers that includes reliever Jeurys Familia and closer Blake Treinen (38 saves, 9-2, 0.78)
Severino is making his fifth postseason appearance in pinstripes and finished this season with impressive numbers that included 220 strikeouts over 191.1 innings of work, while his 19 wins were the third most in baseball.
The challenge for Severino will be to avoid a performance like the one he had in last year’s wild card game against the Minnesota Twins when he lasted just a third of an inning as he allowed four hits and three runs in the top of first.
Last year the Yankees offense roared back from the early 3-0 deficit on the way to an8-4 win, but this time Severino will need to be at his very best to help the Yankees advance as the explosive A’s are not likely to be as forgiving as last year’s Twins.
The Yankees have reason to be optimistic that Severino will persevere as he’s won his last two starts with solid performances where he threw a total of 12 innings, allowed just three runs and struck out 13 batters.
