When we started to reach critical mass with these cliches, one thing the sabermetric revolution was kind enough to do was sort them for us. Pioneers of a statistically-inclined nature boldly ventured into our mental garages and went through each and every VHS to see which ones were worth keeping.

As it turned out some of the tapes were still plenty good. The wisdom of crowds is a thing, and more often that not people who had dedicated their life to the game knew a thing or two about it, even if they didn’t express that knowledge statistically. Managers tended to make more or less sound baseball decisions before they had charts or tablets in the dugouts.

Last night when watching the AL Wild Card Game one baseball cliche in particular came to my mind, one of the better ones. I’m not sure if it’s worth buying a VHS player again for, but so little is nowadays. I’m not entirely certain if it was said during the broadcast aloud, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s been said so many times before:

“You only get one or two chances against an ace.”

It’s a thought that is articulated in many ways, but that’s the basic idea. It makes perfect sense as well. Top-flight starters allow fewer base runners and as a result you get fewer opportunities to do real damage against them.

Last night the New York Yankees went up against an ace in Dallas Keuchel. Sure, he was pitching on three-days rest and sure he was away from Minute Maid Park where he has been so successful, but he is a true ace by any sensible person’s definition.

As a result, the Yankees didn’t get many chances. In fact, they went 0-2 with runners in scoring position all game, including three innings against relievers. However, they did get one opportunity to change the face of the contest, and it came on Keuchel’s final pitch.

Now, I’m not a big fan of ESPN’s constant strike zone display, but in this case it gives us a really good idea of what went on here. Keuchel is trying to jam Alex Rodriguez inside with a cutter. Instead he leaves an 87 mph pitch right over the middle of the plate. It’s slightly higher than the traditional meatball, but not by much.

At this point the Yankees have something going for really the first time in the game with two men on. At the plate they have in Rodriguez a guy who’s hit .263/.394/.532 against left-handed pitching during the regular season, even if he wasn’t at his best down the stretch. Perhaps most importantly, one of the very best pitchers in the game, who may be tiring considering he’s pitching on short rest, has delivered a deliciously hittable pitch.

That was the Yankees chance. Right there. It’s not as if Rodriguez puts that pitch over the wall 75 percent of the time, but he does a fair amount of the time, or he drives it to the alley for a double that ties this up, or he even keeps it going with a sharp single. That’s a ball he can and should drive.

On Tuesday night he didn’t. He got out in front of the pitch a little bit and hit a harmless fly ball to center field.

None of this is to say that the Yankees’ loss is his fault. The team should have created more meaningful offensive opportunities. They shouldn’t have had to capitalize on their one chance to the fullest to win. But in this case they did need that, and Rodriguez was unable to deliver.

The Yankees learned the hard way that aces really can give you one chance, which is especially hard to swallow in a game that was itself one chance to advance in the playoffs. Not all cliches in baseball are created equal, and they can definitely create clutter in your brain and inane rants from commentators, but that doesn’t mean you should throw out all your old tapes.

(Photo: Adam Hunger-USA Today Sports)

At times, home plate umpire Eric Cooper’s strike zone was forgiving to Dallas Keuchel. Other times, the Astros’ defense was menacing; in the fourth, George Springer ranged to his left to rob Alex Rodriguez of a double, and in the sixth, Carlos Correa’s diving play prevented the Yankees from collecting back-to-back hits.

With that in mind, the Yankees walked into nothing short of a predictable vanquish.

Their offense, though encouraging at times, was the same as it’s been for the past few months. They struggled against a left-hander once again, and they failed to string together hits when they needed them most.

“We’re either going to put runs up on the board or we’re not,” said general manager Brian Cashman. “We’re going to swing the bats better than we have recently or we’re not. Tonight was more reflective of what our team has looked like especially in September, from mid-August on.”

And yet, as has been the case all season, the Yankees had a chance. They weren’t expected to have a chance, but they had a chance. And, as Joe Girardi said just a few short weeks ago, “You want a chance.”

Keuchel and Alex Rodriguez dueled with two on, and two out, in the bottom of the sixth. The previous time these two met, Rodriguez was served a two-seam fastball, tailing away. So, he eyed a fastball up and in, and he got one. He swung.

It cut inside.

“I was playing blackjack there, and it paid off,” Keuchel said.

The Yankees didn’t look like a playoff team for the better part of two months, yet found themselves with a shot at the ALDS.

Did the Yankees end up on the wrong end of blackjack?

It’s hard to say whether or not that was the case. The Yankees’ bullpen ERA, once near the top tier of the league, slipped to 17th in all of baseball. The outfield, once a strength of the club, slipped in production when Ellsbury and Gardner dropped off considerably in the second half.

They tried to prevent a decline, but it wasn’t happening. They kicked tires around the league, and there were limited possibilities.

“I didn’t have any place to put anybody,” Cashman said. “We tried making certain deals but I had Beltran in right, Ells in center, Gardy in left. The only second baseman we explored on was Zobrist and he got traded to Kansas City. It was going to cost me Warren and Refsnyder combination. I was like, I’m not going to do that for a three month rental.

“We tried to improve the bullpen, made some significant offers to guys out there that were turned down. So no, I don’t have any regrets. There was nothing that presented itself after the fact that I said, ‘I could have done it.’”

Cashman was stuck between trying to capitalize on great years from Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Carlos Beltran, and thinking about the team’s future, and keeping them strong for years to come. Perhaps, the Yankees could have gone all-out for a win. Not without serious future consequences.

Cashman rattled off almost every name imaginable during his postgame meeting with the media—everyone from Rob Refsnyder, to Mason Williams, to Gary Sanchez. From the sound of it, he’d like to have his whole team back next season.

So, the question becomes: would a healthy club have been enough to win a World Series?

In short—no. For one, the Toronto Blue Jays are just too good. Beyond that, the Yankees simply had too many question marks during the second half of the year, the biggest ones coming at the top of the batting order with Gardner and Ellsbury.

They, like much of the team, crashed and burned.

“I think as a team maybe we hit a little bit of a wall, collectively,” said Rodriguez. “That’s rare, because usually you have some guys get hot, some guys get cold. It seems like all of us hit the wall at the same time.”

The Yankees will not enjoy a different outcome next season if they decide to bring everyone back, hope for the same performances from some of their key veterans, and stash their youth in AAA for another year. They need to add a right-handed power bat, another bullpen arm, and potentially scour the trade market for a young starter similar to Nathan Eovaldi.

Without a change, the Yankees are destined for the same fate as Tuesday. It doesn’t sound like many changes are coming, either.

(Photo: Adam Hunger-USA Today Sports)

What happened, of course, is that Dallas Keuchel went out and did Dallas Keuchel things to the Yankees. He made them look positively feeble. This was not unexpected in the least considering he made them look positively feeble the two other times he threw down with the Yankees this year and that he’s probably going to win the AL Cy Young award. It was the first time he had ever pitched on three days’ rest and that’s probably the reason his outing didn’t extend beyond a mercifully short 87 pitches. Nonetheless, Keuchel being tasked with dismantling the following lineup probably wasn’t the most challenging thing he’s ever done.

• Brett Gardner (left-handed, hasn’t hit well in a while, prone to swinging at junk when in bad stretches)
• Chris Young (professional lefty killer)
• Carlos Beltran (elderly playoff god, emphasis on elderly)
• Alex Rodriguez (still good, but 40 and playing the end of the season on two bad hips)
• Brian McCann (left-handed, lowest batting average in AL in the second half)
• Chase Headley ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
• Greg Bird (left-handed, didn’t figure to be a major part of big-league roster before season, arguably too passive at the plate)
• Rob Refsnyder (.761 OPS in Triple-A this year, marked 17th big=league game of career)
• Didi Gregorius (left-handed, is Didi Gregorius)

When you also consider that Masahiro Tanaka would be unstoppable if not for the laws of physics and a propensity to give up the longball, it was pretty much set to be a long night before the game began.

None of that mattered to the fans at Yankee Stadium. Nor should it have mattered. This was a kill-or-be-killed game, a game to play for the right to all the marbles. This game was high-stakes poker and Russian Roulette played with a full magazine on national television, and the Yankees immediately had the deck stacked against them. Rodriguez named his team the underdog before the game. He was right. Being familiar with the sensation of draining hope and the New York sports world explains why Yankee Stadium went from cheering for every strike in the first inning to booing Gardner and Rodriguez at the end of the game. It doesn’t make it right.

Yankees fans are roundly regarded as some of the worst in all of sports. That’s an inevitable outcome to decades of sustained success and an ownership group that nearly prints money. Unlike, say, Cardinals fans, who are often derided for their hubris and quickness to turn on their own, Yankees fans can tend to be incredibly fatalistic when interacting amongst themselves. Perhaps this is a characteristic of the base model New York sports fan in general. Any cursory tune-in to WFAN will reveal a picture of New York sports rooted in anger and fatalism. It’s not just Yankees fans who seek any opportunity to complain about their team of choice. Mets fans display this quality too, as do Knicks fans, Giants fans, Jets fans, Islanders fans, and to some extent, Rangers fans. Yet we all know that the Mets have a wonderful propensity to devolve into bumbling nincompoops when the urge strikes them, that the Knicks are practically experts at making fools of themselves, and the Jets are, well, the Jets. It’s understandable that fans of these franchises are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe has been dropping early and often for quite some time.

In fact, it’s rather easy to conclude that this is a symptom of sports no matter where the lens is turned. For some reason, rooting for laundry causes us to fetishize anger and dissatisfaction. Perhaps this came about as a result of the rise of the Skip Bayless school of sports media. The Hot Take is a near-omnipresent factor in the way the public at large digests their sports media. It has risen out of the comments section and onto the radio, and from there onto SportsCenter. It glares at you, inflames you, and then thanks you for your clicks. When a dialogue becomes the prevailing attitude in any arena it becomes gospel. So it is with the Hot Take and the sports fan. And so it was at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.

I was just one of the 50,000 fans at Yankee Stadium when Colby Rasmus sent Tanaka’s first pitch into orbit around Alpha Centauri. The air went out of the place so fast that the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning in Yonkers. With it went much of the hope that the night would have a positive ending. The Yankees would manage just five baserunners and struck out for 10 of their 27 outs. Nobody ventured beyond second base. It was the latest and final entry in a string of offensive humiliations.

The chatter among fans in the stands and online proved not to be focused on Keuchel’s utter brilliance or the unsurprising failure of Jacoby Ellsbury to hit after being rushed back from an injury rehab stint that saw him be scratched from the lineup at least twice without any major delay in his timetable. The dialogue was instead focused on the inability of the team to hit in the clutch, Girardi’s failure to properly manage the game, the utter travesty of the Ellsbury signing (and Ellsbury’s perceived lack of caring about the season’s proceedings), Rodriguez’s supposed status as a bad baseball player, and so on. On the subway home, I heard a bonafide “If George [Steinbrenner] was still here!”

It’s perfectly acceptable to be frustrated. In fact, frustration is a natural reaction to what happened on Tuesday night and the preceding skid into the playoffs. To blame it on a lack of good old fashioned Will To Win is foolhardy and arrogant. The sports world is correct when they label Yankees fans as spoiled. There could not possibly be a more apt description. Gardner, an All-Star and the longest tenured Yankee farm product, was booed for having a poor showing against what might have been the most unfair matchup possible for him. Rodriguez, who has been the heart and soul of the team and singlehandedly won back the city with the most improbable comeback in recent memory (AND probably should have been an All-Star too), was booed.

There’s being spoiled, and there’s being petulant. New York sports is all about asking, “What have you done for me lately?” In a way, that’s fair. But when that question is answered by looking at a sample of a few weeks and without consideration for basic outside factors like health and who the pitching savant on the mound is, it leads to ugliness and hypocrisy. Mark Teixeira was a bum until he was the best hitter on the team. Rodriguez was the bane of the team until he carried the team. Ellsbury was a terrible signing until he was a force of nature before his injury, as was Gardner. Gregorius was a terrible ballplayer and the product of a terrible trade until he settled in and became a perfectly fine shortstop. Nathan Eovaldi was a batting practice session until he wrangled his splitter and became the team’s most consistent starter.

This is a team that nobody expected to be near the playoffs. All they did was win 87 games and make it to the playoffs despite injuries and a perceived lackluster winter at the shopping mall and a quiet trade deadline. Yankees fans take Brian Cashman to the cleaners for his quiet deadline, but the fact of the matter is Cashman was hamstrung by the structure of the market and the structure of his team. Our own Kenny Ducey spoke with Cashman on Tuesday, and he detailed exactly why the end of July happened the way it did. He tried to make the bullpen better, but everyone was asking too much. He didn’t want to give up Adam Warren and Refsnyder for three months of Ben Zobrist. Luis Severino was better than any possible starting acquisition short of David Price. They were blocked from doing anything on the waiver wire in August. This is the reality of running a baseball team. It isn’t as simple as pressing the “accept trade” button in a fantasy league. Life sucks and then you die. You build a solid roster and once you lose the chance to add to it, everyone gets hurt and the Blue Jays transform into Babe Ruth.

Some Yankees fans will never be okay with the fact that Girardi wasn’t able to out-manage Keuchel’s slider. That’s a fact of life, as unfortunate as it is. That doesn’t change that there wasn’t a single player on the field last night who deserved to be booed. There wasn’t a single player on the Yankees this year who deserved attacks on their character and effort level when push came to shove. There’s no such thing as “wanting it more.” It’s a parlor trick peddled by talking heads with nothing smart to say. Being upset is perfectly fine. Being hurtful and venomous isn’t. That’s what happened at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, and it made the bitter taste of loss that much worse.

(Photo: Adam Hunger-USA Today Sports) 

Today there were rumors flying that the Yankees were considering playing John Ryan Murphy over Brian McCann in the Wild Card Game. This sounds a bit crazy, but there’s a method to this madness. In terms of playoff performance, McCann has hit .209 in 12 games with 16 strikeouts. In small sample sizes like this, his struggles probably don’t mean much. A career .209 playoff average certainly won’t help his case, though. One other reason for McCann’s possible benching is platoon splits, as McCann has hit worse against lefties in his career, while Murphy is more even against lefties versus righties. McCann also finished the season on a 1 for 22 slide. The Yankees Wild Card starter, Masahiro Tanaka, has been caught by both McCann (119 innings) and Murphy (35 innings). Tanaka has enjoyed slightly more success with Murphy as his battery mate, as he has a 2.83 ERA with Murphy compared to 3.71 ERA with McCann. Even with these factors in mind, McCann is certainly the better catcher and should play. But, if Murphy draws the start, the move could end up working out.

The Yankees infield, like their pitching staff (more on this later), lacks postseason experience. In the middle of the infield, the Yankees are unsure of who to use at second. It may come as solace to fans that they aren’t missing much from Stephen Drew, who has a .212 career average in the playoffs. Chase Headley will finally get his first taste of the postseason this year as despite a long career, the Padres never played in October during his time with San Diego.

Alex Rodriguez struggled in the second half of this season. He hit .278/.382/.515 in the first half, but just .216/.324/.448 in the second. History indicates that Rodriguez shouldn’t be expected to have a huge breakout in the postseason, as his .263/.369/.464 slash line is well below his career averages. A-Rod’s bat speed is all but gone, and he’s had to sit on fastballs to stand a chance at getting hits in the second half. His postseason outlook isn’t rosy.

So far, the Yankees’ veterans haven’t shown a whole lot of success in the postseason. Luckily, the Yankees have Carlos Beltran in the outfield. Beltran and the postseason go hand in hand, as Beltran is one of the best playoff performers of all-time. His .333/.445/.683/1.128 slash line is an incredible one, as are his 16 home runs, 40 RBI, and 35-to-24 walk-to-strikeout ratio over 51 games and 180 at-bats. Sure, Beltran is no longer the base stealing threat or defensive weapon he once was, but he always seems to come up big in the playoffs. Beltran finished this season on a high note, and will hopefully be a big contributor in the Wild Card Game. It’s worth mentioning that Beltran has a nearly even platoon split, but has four hits in ten at-bats (including a home run and a double), against Astros Wild Card starter Dallas Keuchel.

Another Wild Card dilemma the Yankees face is whether to start Chris Young or Brett Gardner. Once again, it seems counterproductive to sit a player like Brett Gardner, who was an All-Star this season, but postseason stats lean towards Young. Young has been spectacular in the postseason, with a .326/.453/1.174 slash line in 12 games (albeit a small sample size). In addition, he is the Yankees lefty killer, which will come in handy against the southpaw Keuchel. Now for Gardner, he had a rough second half and hasn’t been very good in postseason games. Unlike Young, Gardner has played in 33 playoff games, hitting just .215/.257/.231. It may be best for Gardner to sit on Tuesday. If he does, Gardner becomes a pinch running weapon for Girardi to use off the bench.

Beltran and Young have thrived in the playoffs, and this trend continues with Jacoby Ellsbury. He will likely start for the Yankees in the Wild Card Game and could be an impact player. Ellsbury has a .301/.361/.414 slash line in 38 postseason games, and while the lefty is a bit worse against left handed pitchers, he still has hit a respectable .284/.343/.394 against them in his career. (Editor’s note: There’s at least a chance Gardner starts over Ellsbury in center, as he did last Saturday against Orioles lefty Wei-Yin Chen-N.S.)

In terms of pitching, the Yankees won’t have much playoff experience. Of the few players that have appeared in multiple playoff games is Andrew Miller. Miller has appeared in a grand total of five games, throwing 7 1/3 innings of one hit, one walk, and zero run ball. Does this stat carry much weight? Not really, but it’s at least a small positive that Miller has postseason experience.

In terms of performance in the postseason, the Yankees have been a mixed bag. While they have some players that have struggled mightily, others have been stars. Previous postseason stats may not make a huge difference in the Wild Card Game, but they can indicate how a player may perform on such a big stage in an important matchup.

(Photo: Brad Penner-USA Today Sports)

Since the All-Star break, Yankee relievers have pitched to a 3.86 ERA. In the last month, the group has a 4.85 ERA and 4.76 FIP. A hefty portion of the relief work has been done by pitchers that spent the year in the minor leagues and it shows. What was once a strength is now largely a group of inexperienced rookies and tired mainstays. The act of starting up the bullpen has been a roll of the dice for Joe Girardi, especially with his starting pitchers not working deep into games. He now gets to do that with the season on the line, and then against the Royals. He’s got his work cut out for him to say the least.

We know for sure that Betances, Warren, Justin Wilson and Andrew Miller will get spots. These are the rest of the candidates:

• Chasen Shreve
• Chris Capuano
• Ivan Nova
• Bryan Mitchell
• Andrew Bailey
• Nick Rumbelow
• Nick Goody
• Branden Pinder
• Caleb Cotham
• James Pazos
• Chris Martin

There’s a chance that Nathan Eovaldi could become healthy enough to be activated at some point, but the Yankees likely won’t want to risk the chance that he won’t be ready for important outings. That means these are the guys from which Girardi must select. I won’t pretend to have inside knowledge to Girardi’s thought process and most of these pitchers have been inside and outside of his fabled Circle of Trust at various times.

The most obvious choice seems to be Rumbelow. When Rumbelow is right, his stuff is electric. In 15.2 innings with the big club, Rumbelow has struck out 22.1 percent of the batters he’s faced, but he’s also walked five and given up two homers. This is a rather small sample, of course, but Rumbelow isn’t the worst option to eat an inning or two if the Yankees have a comfortable lead. That’s five of the spots filled. The recipients of the other two spots will likely not matter very much, as if the last man in the bullpen has to get into a playoff game, the game is likely over or deep into extra innings. The Royals showed us last year that due to the rest days built into the playoff schedule, it’s a bit easier to run the big guns out every time they’re needed.

That won’t matter if the Yankees don’t escape the showdown with the Astros. In the very real scenario in which Masahiro Tanaka serves up a few home runs to the powerful Astros and the Yankees have to get into their bullpen early, how do they piece together the necessary innings? CC Sabathia will probably be available in relief, but Sabathia has allowed a humongous .370 wOBA to right-handed hitters this year. The Astros are made up largely of righty power hitters like Carlos Correa, Evan Gattis and George Springer. Is Luis Severino capable of pitching effectively on short rest? With Dallas Kuechel on the mound for Houston, the Yankees don’t want to have to find out.

(Photos: Adam Hunger-USA Today Sports) 

We can guess at the composition of most of that 25-man roster, beginning with about 16 sure things:

C Brian McCann

C John Ryan Murhphy

1B Greg Bird

SS Didi Gregorius

3B Chase Headley

OF Carlos Beltran

OF Jacoby Ellsbury

OF Brett Gardner

OF Chris Young

DH Alex Rodriguez

P Masahiro Tanaka

P Dellin Betances

P Andrew Miller

P Justin Wilson

P Adam Warren

Beyond those 15, the Yankees will likely carry two additional starting pitchers, in case of emergency, and might as well bring along pinch-running specialist Rico Noel, bringing our total to 18 (seven pitchers, 11 position players). Throw in three more relievers (Rumbelow? Shreve? Capuano? Bailey? Pinder? Pazos? Does it even matter?) and we’re down to four spots, which will likely all go to position players.

Which brings up to the central question of Yankee wild-card-game roster-building: Which and how many of the Yankees’ five second basemen will be tabbed for a spot.

This decision will come down to two key variables. 1) Is Stephen Drew healthy? and 2) Is the opposing starting pitcher right-handed or left-handed?

Here are the contingencies.

1. If Drew is healthy and a right-hander is on the mound, the Yankees will start Drew and carry Dustin Ackley and Rob Refsnyder off the bench.

Drew was the Yankees’ starting second baseman all season, so if he’s fully healthy (and we’ll get to that in a minute) he likely gets the start. Refsnyder will come along to pinch-hit against a lefty, and Ackley adds positional versatility. It’s possible the Yankees would take Brendan Ryan instead of Ackley, valuing late-game defense over offensive pop and positional versatility.

2. If Drew is NOT healthy and a right-hander is on the mound, the Yankees will start Ackley and carry Refsnyder and Ryan off the bench.

This one is pretty straightforward. If Drew can’t go, the left-handed Ackley gets the nod against a righty, with Refsnyder available to pinch-hit and Ryan waiting to enter as a defensive replacement.

3. If Drew is healthy and a left-hander is on the mound, the Yankees will start Refsnyder and carry Ackley and Drew off the bench.

Given how well the right-handed-hitting Refsnyder has performed in September, he’ll clearly get a start against a lefty, with Ackley there for his versatility and ability to pinch-hit against a righty. The only question with this scenario is whether Drew or Ryan gets the final spot. There’s a strong argument that because Ackley will be available as a bat off the bench, the Yankees can worry exclusively about defense for the final spot and opt for Ryan, but Drew is no slouch in the field either and is a better hitter.

4. If Drew is NOT healthy and a left-hander is on the mound, the Yankees will start Refsnyder and carry Ackley and Ryan off the bench.

If Drew can’t play, Ryan comes along as a defensive sub essentially by default.

It is somewhat possible that if Drew is healthy the Yankees would roster all four of those second basemen (and theoretically possible they would take Jose Pirela if Drew isn’t ready to go). Yes, Ackley can also play the outfield, but Joe Girardi would probably be wiser to carry Slade Heathcott in case of emergency than to bring along a fourth second baseman.

As for which scenario is most likely… Joe Girardi said Friday that Drew is “doubtful” to return, so the Yankees will prepare to move forward without him. The Astros will likely start Dallas Keuchel, pitching on three days rest for the first time in his career.

That means the best bet for Tuesday’s game is a lineup featuring Rob Refsnyder, a rookie with 39 career plate appearances, at second base.

(Photo: Jonathan Dyer-USA Today Sports)