Yankees and Astros Look Formidable in the A.L. Playoffs

Let’s put the caveat up front: Nobody clinches a best-of-five series in Game 1. The Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland Athletics won their divisions emphatically this season, and both could come back to meet in the American League Championship Series.

But the Yankees have won all of their postseason games so far, just like the Houston Astros. Three games per team is a small sample, but it is all we have — and production sure seems underway for Part III of the Yankees/Astros A.L.C.S. trilogy, after Houston victories in 2017 and 2019.

Both teams played close games for a while on Monday, then bludgeoned their way to lopsided decisions: 10-5 by the Astros over the A’s in Los Angeles, and 9-3 by the Yankees over the Rays in San Diego. The Astros smacked 16 hits (three for homers), and the Yankees 15 (four for homers).

“That was big, to come out like we did, just wearing their pitchers down the whole game,” said the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton, whose grand slam put the game out of reach in the ninth. “It was huge.”

With no off-days in this round, pitching depth is essential. That would seem to favor the A’s and the Rays, whose bullpens were the best in the A.L. this season. Yet both teams’ relievers looked vulnerable on Monday, while the Astros and the Yankees combined for eight hitless, scoreless innings of relief.

Somehow, it was hardly surprising. The Rays and the A’s are marvels of the modern game, experts at developing talent and finding bargains, never resorting to full-scale teardowns despite low payrolls and outdated stadiums. But postseason success eludes them.

Ten different franchises have reached the A.L.C.S. since the last time the A’s or Rays got there. The A’s last appeared in 2006, the Rays in 2008. In the 2010s, Oakland made five trips to the postseason without reaching that round, Tampa Bay four.

Both teams keep earning more chances, and a breakthrough by one or both would be fun to see. But until proven differently, expect teams to play to their track records. Even as the Astros were 29-31 in the regular season (including 3-7 against Oakland), the A’s knew they were better than they seemed.

“They’re just an advanced team, and you can’t take anybody lightly,” Oakland’s pitching coach, Scott Emerson, said last week. “I know we had their number more this year, but when you’re a team like that, sometimes you feel like those guys are just waiting to play in the playoffs.”

The 60-game schedule was unnatural for everyone, but it might have hit Houston and the Yankees more acutely. The Astros used 12 pitchers in their World Series loss to Washington last year, but just four are active for them now: Zack Greinke, Josh James, Ryan Pressly and Jose Urquidy. The rest of the staff came together on the fly; the trio that silenced Oakland from the fifth through the eighth innings on Monday — Blake Taylor, Enoli Paredes and Cristian Javier — had never pitched in the majors before July.

“They’ve been forced to grow up and learn some valuable lessons the hard way sometimes,” Manager Dusty Baker said. “That’s on-the-job training at its best.”

The Yankees weathered injuries all season, but reached the playoffs at close to full strength and clobbered Cleveland for seven homers and 22 runs in two games last week. It was more of the same on Monday, when Clint Frazier, Kyle Higashioka and Aaron Judge all went deep off the Rays’ Blake Snell, a former Cy Young Award winner.

The Yankees’ Gerrit Cole has not won that award — Justin Verlander, now sidelined after Tommy John surgery, beat him out with Houston last year — but he is starting to look like one of those classic aces who pitches even better under pressure.

In six of his last eight postseason starts before Monday — including two against the Rays for Houston last fall — Cole worked at least seven innings while allowing no more than two earned runs. Few teams have a pitcher with that pedigree, and the Rays were not exactly in on the bidding last December that won Cole a nine-year, $324 million contract in free agency.

“He’s got those intangibles to step his game up,” Rays Manager Kevin Cash said before Game 1. “I would anticipate that we’re all preparing for that. It’s postseason; your great ones — which he is — can dial it up a little bit.”

Monday’s start was not Cole’s best — six innings, three earned runs — but he fanned eight and improved his career postseason record to 8-4. The Yankees, he said, have the same combination of skill and sophistication he saw with the Astros the last two seasons.

“We have a lot of really good players, but we have a lot of smart players,” Cole said. “A good, common theme between all the good teams that I’ve played on is a high level of communication, whether we’re talking about the pitchers in the dugout, from the leadoff guy to the nine hole, or whether we’re talking about defense, how we’re pitching somebody, maybe trying to get an edge in terms of shading one way or the other. Just any sort of feedback from anybody facilitating those conversations is huge.”

The Astros took teamwork to troubling extremes on their way to the 2017 World Series title, using an illegal sign-stealing scheme to gain an edge in home games. Their hitters have been scorned, though not suspended, and their defiance was written on Carlos Correa’s T-shirt on Monday: “H-TOWN VS. EVERYONE,” it said.

Yet after the game, in which he homered twice and drove in four runs, Correa seemed motivated less by doubters and more by the sheer joy of playing when the games matter most.

“I want to be in tough spots; I want to be in decisive situations,” Correa said. “I just prepare myself every single day, mentally, so when that situation comes, I stay ready. October baseball, the energy’s just different. I know there’s no fans this year, but still, knowing you win or go home is what drives me.”

With two more wins, the Astros will reach the league championship series for the fourth year in a row. It would be the longest streak in the A.L. since 1998 through 2001 — by the Yankees, of course.