Beat goes on for Yankees vs. the AL Central

You can understand why the flyover states look dimly upon the Mighty Metropolis, the Grand Gotham. New York does tend to treat them rather inhospitably in October. More to the point, the Yankees do. Year after year, ALDS after ALDS, the Yankees welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of baseball, better known by a more formal name.

The American League Central Division.

Mostly, the sacrificial nines conduct their business in the blue-and-red colors of the Minnesota Twins. Five times since 2003 the Yankees have drawn the Twinkies and five times they have slapped them silly in the ALDS (and once in the wild card). The Cleveland team, now the Guardians, stormed to a 2-0 lead in 2017, then never won again.

For kicks, the Yankees also swept the erstwhile Tribe in the best-of-three miniseries in 2020, a matchup that never left what should have been for Cleveland the comfortable parameters of Progressive Field.

And now we are well on the way to another chapter of some Flyover Filleting, some Midwestern Mashing, the Damn Yankees looking awfully damned dominant Tuesday night in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Guardians, topping the Central champs, 4-1. Gerrit Cole was terrific. The bullpen did its job. The offense slugged a couple of homers, one by Harrison Bader, one by Anthony Rizzo.

Guardians star Jose Ramire is tagged out by Josh Donaldson in the eighth inning of the Yankees’ 4-1 ALDS Game 1 win. Robert Sabo

Lather, rinse, repeat.

“You’ve got to win three, however you get there. You want to rack them up when you can,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s hard to win playoff games, so it’s certainly really good to get the first one at home.”

And the home crowd, all 47,807 of them was equal to the night, welcoming October baseball back to The Bronx for the first time in three years.

“The energy here,” Rizzo said, “is unmatched.”

“They were in every pitch tonight,” said Cole, after 6 ¹/₃ innings of four-hit, eight-strikeout big-game brilliance. “What a wonderful experience to have them behind us.”

So the Yankees, and their constituents, were eager to pounce after a six-day sabbatical. But you can forgive the players if they smiled quietly to themselves the way things shook out at the end of the season. Soon enough it may become troublesome that the Astros passed them and then lapped them for the No. 1 seed in the American League tournament.

(Though for most of Tuesday afternoon, when the Mariners were smoking the Astros in Houston, it seemed that might be well on the way to being splendidly moot until Yordy Alvarez went all Roy Hobbs on the M’s at Minute Maid Park)

But the substantial consolation prize, at least as far as the Yankees are concerned, was that No. 2 in the AL meant that they’d draw the Guardians if chalk prevailed in their wild-card matchup with the Rays. Again: you weren’t going to see any Yankees do a public touchdown dance when Cleveland’s Oscar Gonzalez sent the Rays packing Saturday in the 15th inning.

Aaron Judge celebrates with Josh Donaldson after the Yankees’ Game 1 win.N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg

Still …

The Guardians or the Rays?

Would you rather have a bowl of ice cream or a plate of radishes?

OK. We get it. The Yankees haven’t been invincible against the Central. Cleveland has twice ousted them in this very ALDS, in 1997 and 2007. The Tigers have beaten them three times since 2006 in postseason, twice in the ALDS. It hasn’t always been this much of a hammer-versus-nail relationship.

It just mostly is. And certainly feels like it is.

And yes: there’s plenty of series left. The Guardians will throw their ace, Shane Bieber, in Game 2, whenever Game 2 is played, and back in the day even the Twins looked formidable on those playoff days when they sent Johan Santana after the Yankees. You steal a game on the road in a short series nobody much cares if it’s Game 1 or Game 2. That’s still out there for Cleveland on Thursday (or Friday). The series is still there for them.

Terry Francona, for one, doesn’t feel like his team should be viewed as the college-sports equivalent of a Buy Game.

“Everything we do is new because we’re young,” the Cleveland manager said. “It was a fantastic atmosphere. Our guys like to play baseball; they just got beat tonight. We’ll come back in a couple of days and see if we can do better.”

Francona has seen a thing or three in his time, and isn’t usually one to waste time blowing smoke. He truly believes that.

But do you?

More to the point: does his team?