Of course the Yankees are favored in Tuesday night's wild card game, based both on current result and not-so-current history. If you break down aspects of the game, the Yankees have an advantage almost everywhere, with the exception of the fact that the Twins are playing with house money after coming off a 103-loss season.
In other words, the Twins aren't supposed to be here and the Yankees aren't supposed to lose.
Here's a look at some of what's being written and said in New York.
At CBS New York, Ernie Palladino writes that the Yankees couldn't have planned things much better: "Anything can happen. Anything is possible. But if their respective final months were any indication, the deck is stacked heavily toward the Yankees.The Indians will present a far different challenge. And that's only providing nothing untoward happens in the Bronx on Tuesday. But heading into the win-or-bust scenario, the Yanks couldn't have planned a better entrance."
Read his full report here.
The Yankees Go Yard blog opens its game preview this way: "This is not the wild-card play-in game anyone expected in April. After losing 103 games in 2016, Paul Molitor's Twins will take on Joe Girardi's Yankees, who, themselves have sped up the organizational rebuild by an entire calendar year. For those who need a refresher on how these two teams fared most recently against one-another, it was a complete one-sided clobbering back on Sept 18-20, when the Bombers swept the Twinkies, 18-6 in total runs scored."
Tim Kurkjian of ESPN.com makes a comparison between the teams' bullpens. Guess who fares better? "Oh my. The league is hitting .205 off the Yankees' pen, by far the lowest opponents' average in the league. The relievers have 653 strikeouts in only 538 1/3 innings. Their top eight relievers all average a strikeout per inning, led by Chad Green, who has 103 strikeouts and 17 walks in 69 innings. They can follow him with, among others, Adam Warren, Tommy Kahnle, David Robertson, Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman, making the Yankees so dangerous in October because they can shorten a game to five innings. Chapman, it appears, is over his throwing issues from a month ago, and he is close to being his intimidating best. Meanwhile, the Twins traded their closer (Brandon Kintzler) to the Washington Nationals at the trade deadline, making a closer of Matt Belisle, who has been good, as has Trevor Hildenberger. But, the Twins' bullpen has only 482 strikeouts, the second fewest in the league."
Here's the rest of his analysis
Ken Davidoff of the New York Post tells Yankees fans they should be nervous: "The Yankees put together such an impressive season — they seem like such a bona fide threat this month against the Indians, Astros and Red Sox — that it would be a huge letdown to wrap things up Tuesday night. Whereas the Twins' arrival here is more of a dizzying aberration. They can sell their fan base on progress no matter what goes down Tuesday. Will that compel the Yankees youngsters to press Yankees fans [are] hoping 2017 won't end for a while. It shouldn't wrap up Tuesday night. That doesn't mean it won't, though. You'll just have to sweat it out with the Yankees themselves."
Read the rest of Davidoff's preview
If you need an ugly refresher in the Yankees-Twins postseason history, the New York Daily News has this.
