The New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays open their best-of-five series of the American League Division on Monday evening at Petco Park in San Diego. AL East’s two rivals meet for the first time in the playoffs. The Yankees beat Cleveland in the Wild Card Series last week to move forward. The rays swept the Blue Jays. Now is a trip to the ALCS.
Let’s set up the scene for game 1 with the essentials.
How to watch
date: Monday, October 5th | time, 8:07 p.m. ET
place: Petco Park (San Diego, California)
TV: TBS | electricity: TBS App
Opportunities: NYY -140; TB +130; O / U: 7
Jugs: Gerrit Cole versus Blake Snell
Consequences: CBS Sport App
preview
Certainly no love is lost in this series. The Yankees and Rays have long had bad blood, with their regular seasonal meetings with numerous incidents of bank clearing (and subsequent suspensions) in recent years. I’m not sure if that carries over to the postseason – too much is at stake in October to drill people, right? – but I cannot say that it is not carried over either.
“They don’t like us, we don’t like them, and it will continue to do so,” Kevin Kiermaier told reporters. including Erik Boland from Newsday, on Friday.
The Rays dominated the regular season series with New York. They won eight out of ten games and scored 47-34 points, although the Yankees had neither Giancarlo Stanton nor Aaron Judge for most of those games. The towering duo is now healthy and together they have won three home runs against Cleveland’s great pitching staff in the Wild Card Series.
As always, the Rays will try to stifle their opponent with speed and high spin balls while aggressively getting posts up and down the lineup. If the rays win, it needs a village. The Yankees can count on star players to have that one punch in a game. Both approaches show how successful these two teams have been over the past few seasons.
forecast
Despite the regular season series, I go with the Yankees in Game 1. Cole has been on a different level for the past six weeks and New York’s offense against Cleveland was suspended. Right now they are as dangerous as they looked to be at any point in 2020. Give me the Yankees and Cole in a close game 1 with Gio Urshela taking the big hit.
