Those of you who saw the "Baby Bombers" win 100 games and add a decisive win in the AL Wild Card Game, and are now making excuses about how we almost beat The Scum on a night when Chris Sale pitched, stop.
There will be either 2 or 3 games at Fenway in this series, and we have to win at least 1 of them. We had the chance tonight, and we didn't do it. The Red Sox still have the hammer over us, and nothing has changed.
J.A. Happ, our best starting pitcher since acquiring him, was counted on to have a big game in a big game, and, as a man who actually cared whether or not the Yankees win the Pennant, George Steinbrenner, would have said, he spit the bit. He allowed 3 runs in the 1st inning and 2 more in the 3rd.
The game was over.
Sale held the Yankees scoreless until the 6th. By the 7th, the Yankees had closed to within 5-3. In the 9th, Aaron Judge hit a home run off Craig Kimbrel to make it 5-4.
In the end, though, 2 of Brian Cashman's prize acquisitions, Giancarlo Stanton and Luke "I used to be Shane Spencer but now I'm just a rookie" Voit, in the biggest at-bats of their careers, struck out.
Giancarlo Stanton was acquired to be the new Alex Rodriguez. Mission accomplished: He has failed against the Red Sox in the postseason.
Game 2 is tomorrow night. Masahiro Tanaka pitches against David Price. In his career, Price is 0-8 as a postseason starter, and has been hit hard by the Yankees.
It would be a fine time, and a fine way, for something to change: With our luck, he'll turn into Don Larsen tonight.
The Yankees are now 2 losses away from not just another postseason failure, but the worst kind: Against the Red Sox.
(Okay, losing in the postseason to the Mets, which could only happen in the World Series, would be worse, but since the Mets are unlikely to reach the postseason again anytime soon, that's not a threat.)
The Yankees are now 2 losses away from having no more excuses for Brian Cashman. Lose this series, and he must be fired.
This is his team now. Not Joe Girardi's. And, clearly, not Aaron Boone's. Boone is a figurehead. Cashman put this team together, and Cashman tells Boone how to run it. It's Cashman's team, and this postseason is a referendum on him. Winning the Wild Card Game does nothing for him: It, alone, is not good enough.
A Pennant is the minimum. And we can't win the Pennant if we dont' win the ALDS. And we can't win the ALDS if we don't win at least 1 game in Fenway Park.
We have 1, maybe 2 chances left. Will we take tonight's chance and run with it?
What evidence do we have that we will? Everything has changed. And yet, nothing has changed.