BY BOB BEHLER
Most casual fans don’t like 1-0 games. I love them. Great pitching, great defense, all kinds of strategy. You hang on every pitch. One pitch in the 7th inning from Cleveland lefty Andrew Miller to Yankee lefty hitter Greg Bird was deposited into the upper deck at Yankee Stadium. That was it. Managers maneuver in the late innings to matchups like that. For a rare occasion lefty/lefty worked for the batter. Bird became only the second lefthanded hitter all year to homer off of Miller. Things you don’t expect to see happen all the time in baseball. In an NBA playoff game you’d never expect to see someone come off the bench and lead the time in scoring. In baseball its the norm. Aaron Judge, hasn’t got a hit in the series, but makes the huge defensive play and there was drama in the ninth. I’ve seen several post season games at the old Yankee Stadium. There was nothing more intense.
Monday will be a baseball lovers day to celebrate. It will be like it was when I was a kid when you would come down with “fakeitis” to watch daytime baseball in the post season. A quadruple-header begins at 11 am and includes games at Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox host the Astros at Fenway looking to send the series back to Houston for a deciding game five. The Nationals got the post seasons biggest home run from Bryce Harper in game two Saturday igniting a dead-in-the-water Washington team that propelled them to come-from-behind win over the Cubs. (The Nats have never one a post season series). The Yankees will try to stay alive against the Indians and then the Diamond Backs and Dodgers will play the nightcap, with Arizona sending ace Zach Greinke to the mound against Yu Darvish of LA.
Look for a high scoring game at Fenway with no starter getting past the fifth. I think Houston finds a way to close them out. In other AL series, Luis Severino can’t be as bad as he was against Minnesota and Trevor Bauer can’t be as good as he was against the Yankees on Thursday. Bauer goes on short rest. I like the Yankees in another low scoring game. Over in the NL, Washington has their ace Max Scherzer on the mound against the Cubs. He had a hamstring cramp in his last regular season start. If he isn’t effective it will be another mishap for Washington in the post season. I think he gets it done and gives the former Expos a 2-1 series lead. And I think Zack Greinke gets it done over his old team the Dodgers and that series will continue.
