There were four terrific teams in the American League this year, but five playoff teams.
The Red Sox, Yankees, Indians and Astros each won at least 91 games and all outscored their opponents by at least 117 runs. The Twins are the gatecrashers here.
Of the 58 teams that have qualified as wild cards since the format was installed in 1995, none has had a lower winning percentage than the 2017 Twins’ .525 — and that includes the last six seasons, when two wild cards have reached in both leagues.
These Twins outscored opponents by 27 runs, but were 12-26 against the other four AL playoff teams, outscored in those 38 contests by 104 runs.
One of these AL playoff clubs is not like the other.
There were just five AL teams above .500 and Minnesota is one almost because some team had to be the best of the worst. The Twins could be offended by such a statement, except even their front office didn’t believe in the team, trading closer Brandon Kintzler at the July deadline and also Jaime Garcia to the Yankees.
If the Yankees and Twins played 100 times, my suspicion is the Yanks would win at least 65. But they are going to play just once on Tuesday night, and let’s face it: You wouldn’t want me to tell you that you had a 35 percent chance of getting hit by lightning tomorrow. But that is the situation the Yankees are in. A bad three hours, and the Yankees’ season is over.
“You realize what an opportunity we have in front of us, and it is the wild-card game,” Brett Gardner said. “So anything can happen. But we have to play well and if we play well, we’ll win and we’ll continue. And if we don’t, we’ll go home.”
The Yankees do have opportunity. They have a team well-rounded enough, especially with so much power in their lineup and bullpen, to win a World Series. It would be hard to find anyone who believes that the Twins can win 12 games and get a parade this year.
But this is just one game. And it is baseball, not Alabama vs. Vanderbilt in college football. One 315-foot, three-run homer down the right-field line by a Twin or an ill-timed Gary Sanchez passed ball or two and the Yanks will go from a team that could win a title to plotting how to do it next year.
“I was here two years ago, so I know how that works and it’s one of those things where it’s the way that it’s set up and it’s one game, and whoever wins advances to play the Indians,” Gardner said.
Gardner was referring to the 2015 wild-card game when the Astros came into Yankee Stadium and eliminated the Yanks 3-0.
But those Yankees limped toward the playoffs, holding onto a slot. They were facing Dallas Keuchel, who had suffocated them that year and in his career. The Astros were the visitors, but hardly seen as huge underdogs, like these Twins.
Ervin Santana starts for the Twins. He is 0-5 with a 6.43 ERA in six starts at the new Yankee Stadium.
The Yanks will begin this game with the better starter, much better bullpen, better offense, better defense and home-field advantage, after accumulating the best home record in the AL this year. They also come in playing well in pretty much every phase. The Yanks were 20-8 over the last month, including 3-0 against the Twins, who finished 14-14 from Sept. 1 on.
And in a way, as you lay one advantage on top of the other for the Yankees, you get to what the Twins’ big edge is in this game — the utter lack of expectations. No matter what occurs in the wild-card tilt, they had a great season as the first team to ever go from triple-digit losses one year (103) to the playoffs the next.
With time, the Yanks will probably feel the same way about this season, what with a cornerstone for great things in the future forming around Severino, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Chad Green, Didi Gregorius and several others.
But on Tuesday night the reality will be that the Twins want to win, the Yankees have to win. That will exert some level of pressure, especially if Severino doesn’t have it and/or Minnesota builds an early lead and the outs start ticking toward oblivion.
“I feel good going in,” Joe Girardi said. “It’s a one-game playoff. It really is going to come down to execution of pitches and defense and putting a good swing on a baseball. So, there’s two teams that are going to fight like heck [Tuesday], and one of us is not going to move on, but I really like the way we’ve been playing.”
If both teams play their best, the Yanks will win. But this is baseball, and weird stuff happens in individual games. The Yanks are huge favorites, and somehow that is the Twins’ advantage.