Thoughts before Game 1 of the 2024 ALDS

I said it Friday and it’s worth repeating: The Yankees may never have a better chance to win the World Series in the Gerrit Cole/Aaron Judge era than they do this year. The Royals and either the Guardians or Tigers stand between them and the pennant, and there’s no superteam in the NL. Maybe the Phillies, and the Mets have a team of destiny thing going on right now, but there’s no powerhouse like the 2019-22 Dodgers. The baseball gods did their part. Now it’s on the Yankees to do theirs and bring this thing home. Here are the ALDS ZiPS odds and a few quick thoughts before the Yankees begin their postseason.

ALDS Game 1: RHP Gerrit Cole vs. RHP Michael Wacha (6:30pm ET on TBS, Max)

1. The ALDS roster. The ALDS roster was due to MLB at 10am ET on Saturday and the Yankees publicly announced it about 90 minutes later. Here are the 26 players the Yankees will use against the Royals:

Jake Cousins makes it, Anthony Rizzo does not. Rizzo worked out the last few days but said Friday he can’t grip a bat or close his glove properly – “You don't really know what fingers you squeeze with in your glove until you have two broken ones,” he told Gary Phillips – so he’s a no go.

The Yankees went with 15 position players and only 11 pitchers, which is what I hoped. With three off-days in a best-of-five, 13 pitchers would have been overkill, and even 12 would be too many. The roster is almost exactly what I laid out earlier this week, only with pinch-running specialist Duke Ellis over the Clayton Beeter/Mark Leiter Jr./Marcus Stroman bullpen spot.

(I'm guessing Brian Cashman secretly enjoyed leaving Stroman off the ALDS roster after their 2019 spat.)

Jack Curry says his “hunch” is Alex Verdugo will start in left field and Oswaldo Cabrera will start at first base in Game 1, and no one is more plugged in than Jack. Verdugo in left and Cabrera at first is happening. Given how much Ben Rice struggled at the end of his initial call up, I guess Cabrera at first makes sense. The Yankees are loyal to Verdugo for whatever reason. I don’t understand it, but they are.

The Game 1 lineup is not the forever lineup. The Yankees can always plug Rice and Jasson Domínguez and whoever else in there for Game 2. The postseason is a fresh start and I hope Verdugo hits. He seems like the kinda guy who will randomly go 8-for-17 with three doubles, four walks, and one strikeout in a postseason series. They keep extending your leash, Alex. Time to reward their faith.

2. The importance of Game 1. From the no duh department: Game 1 is really important. Since divisional play began in 1995, the winner of Game 1 has won 84 of 116 best-of-five series, or 72%. It’s really hard to win three times in four games after dropping Game 1. Doable, of course, but really hard. Winning Game 1 doesn’t automatically lead to a series win. It just makes life a lot easier.

For this ALDS specifically, Game 1 is the only game guaranteed to be played in which the Yankees will have the clear-cut pitching advantage. Neither team has announced their rotation beyond Game 2, but it’s not hard to figure out what it’ll be:

• Game 1: Gerrit Cole vs. Michael Wacha

• Game 2: Carlos Rodón vs. Cole Ragans

• Game 3: Luis Gil/Clarke Schmidt vs. Seth Lugo

• Game 4: Cole vs. Wacha (normal rest) (if necessary)

• Game 5: Rodón vs. Ragans (normal rest) (if necessary)

Drop Game 1 with Cole on the mound and that puts you in a hole with Ragans and Lugo lined up for the next two games. That’s not a great place to be. Win Game 1 though, then the Yankees are in a position where they only need to beat Ragans and/or Lugo once to win the series, in theory. Mostly though, you don’t want to lose Game 1 and then have to face Ragans and Lugo. That’s a tough assignment.

Cole finished the regular season at the top of his game. Even including that poor start against the Red Sox, he had a 2.25 ERA (2.62 FIP) with 26.0 K% and 7.2 BB% in his final 10 starts. Only two homers allowed in 60 innings too. It is October and he’s in midseason form. Lugo, Ragans, Wacha, Tarik Skubal and all those guys are up around 200 innings. Cole’s thrown 95. In theory, he’s in a much better place physically. 

In October, the most important game is always today’s game, the Yankees get to start the ALDS with their ace against the other team’s No. 3 (not that Wacha is a pushover). Starting pitching isn’t everything. It is a lot though, and the Royals have the advantage this series. The difference between a Game 1 win and a Game 1 loss is significant in terms of the series outlook, both historically and in the context of this series given the pitching situation. 

3. A low-scoring postseason (so far). The Wild Card Series was low scoring. Five of the nine games featured six or fewer runs, and teams hit .219/.284/.325 (74 wRC+) with 54 runs and 13 homers in the nine games. The Braves-Padres series accounted for five of those 13 homers. Only once, the Mets in Game 1, did a team score more than five runs in the Wild Card Series.

It’s only nine games and I don’t want to make too much of it, especially when so many of the game’s very best hitters had a Wild Card Series bye and haven’t played yet (Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Bryce Harper, José Ramírez, etc.). That said, offense was way down in September. Way more than usual. Here are the wRC+ and average distances on barrels. This is not normal:

Average barrel distance is a pretty good quick and dirty measurement of, okay, the ball has changed, and that isn’t the case this year. Something did happen in September though. Losing five (!) points of wRC+ on a league-wide scale is absolutely massive. Now offense is down even further in the postseason, albeit in the tiny sample of nine games played by teams who weren't among the two best in their league.

Offense always goes down in the postseason. No. 5 starters and last guy in the bullpen types go away and each team’s best pitchers throw an inordinate number of innings, so of course offense goes down this time of year. Runs per game goes down while home runs per game stays the same (or even increases slightly), meaning homers take on added importance in October. Here are the last few years:

Once the Dodgers, Phillies, and Yankees start playing (not so much the Guardians) and more games are played in general, postseason offense will increase, I’m sure of it. Right now though, offense has been way down through one round, and that comes after a September in which offense was way down around the league. I dunno, man. Something’s going on here. I don’t know what, but something.

I guess if offense stays down, that benefits the Royals in the ALDS? They’re built to win low-scoring games between their rotation (and their revamped bullpen) and contact/speed offense. The Yankees are built to bang and there’s not much banging going on this October. Then again, I’d like to think Aaron Judge and Juan Soto (and Giancarlo Stanton) transcend league offensive trends and can crush the ball in any environment.

In every postseason of the Judge era, the Yankees got eliminated because they were short on offense, not because the pitching staff got blasted and didn’t give them a chance. They have offensive black holes at first base, shortstop, and left field as it is. Add in all the premium arms you see in October, and I reckon we’re in for some low scoring games this month, even if offense bounces back outside the Wild Card Series.

Offense always goes down in the postseason and that reduces the margin of error. The dopey defensive and baserunning mistakes the Yankees are prone to making – the kind of mistakes the Royals feast on – are even more costly, so please Yankees, don’t beat yourself. I know this is probably too much to ask, but please. Don’t make things harder on yourselves than it already is.

4. Rapid fire thoughts. Kansas City’s bullpen ranked 20th in ERA (4.13), 14th in FIP (3.89), and 26th in WPA (-0.63) during the regular season, but do not mistake that for them having a bad bullpen. The bullpen they have right now is not the bullpen they had most of the season. Lucas Erceg has been nails since the trade deadline, Kris Bubic returned from Tommy John surgery in early July and really hit his stride in the middle of August, and John Schreiber has been lights out since returning from his knee injury in August. Those are three guys the Royals did not have most of the season. Kansas City’s bullpen had a 2.77 ERA (2.73 FIP) and +1.92 WPA in September. That better represents the bullpen we’ll see in the ALDS … Bold-ish prediction: Jazz Chisholm Jr. has a standout series at the plate including one Big Moment. I bet the Royals bunt on him a few times to test his occasionally shaky third base defense, so fingers crossed that goes well. At the plate though, I think Jazz is primed for a big series … And finally, will anyone new throw out a ceremonial first pitch this postseason, or will it be the same cast of characters? David Cone, Mariano Rivera, CC Sabathia, Bernie Williams, etc. Please don’t take this as a complaint. Those guys rule and there’s something powerful about having, say, the greatest relief pitcher in history throw out the first pitch. The Yankees flaunt their history well and October is a good time to do it. I just wonder whether any new faces (Brett Gardner? probably not) will enter the mix, for the sake of variety. I guess we’ll find out soon.