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Frank Franklin II / Associated Press
NEW YORK – The day the Boston Red Sox won the AL East at Yankee Stadium, the long-time voice of Sox radio, Joe Castiglione, stood in the dugout before the game, leaving a crazy thought to the 39, team on the field..
The Sox would finish the regular season a little over a week later, with the highest number of baseball wins this year and the most wins of a Red Sox team each year. The New York Yankees would end up far in second place in the American Hockey League.
"It's still the Yankees," Castiglione said. "You always fear them – and our fans too."
They are always the Yankees, and when they are at their best, they give you every reason to fear them.
It's not automatic that they pass the Red Sox in the division series of the American League, in the same way that they beat Oakland Athletics, 7-2, in the game AL Wild Card Game of Wednesday. But at a party where Yankee Stadium fans were having fun chanting "We Want Boston" on a number of occasions, the Yankees had every reason to believe that she could show up at Fenway Park on Friday night as being more that a challenger worthy of the 108 wins of the Red Sox.
"We wanted Boston," said Dellin Betances, a member of the Yankees' relief team. "It's who's next, everyone in baseball wanted this game."
It's the Yankees and the Red Sox, and all that implies, for the first time in the playoffs since the AHL championship of 2004, that no one in these two groups will ever forget. But it's more than that.
While this year's Red Sox have won more games than any other Red Sox team in history, the Yankees are the best team with wild cards.
Start with their 100 wins, the greatest number by a wild card. Then watch the games where Aaron Judge was in training, before and after missing 45 games with a broken bone in his hand.
With Aaron Judge back to join Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees are a different and better team.Frank Franklin II / Associated Press
With Judge in the starting lineup this season, the Yankees were 72-36, which equates to a winning percentage of .667. Prorate for a full season of 162 games and you have 108 wins.
When the Yankees disappeared, they traveled to Fenway in early August and were swept into four parts. It almost ended the division race with almost two months to go.
The judge is back and he's doing things like what he did with A Wednesday, when his two home runs in the first inning made the Wild Card play strongly in favor of the Yankees almost as soon as the beginning. When his double started a sixth round of four innings, he sape any remaining drama.
"After this match, the confidence was greater," said starting pitcher Luis Severino, who himself inspired a lot of confidence with his four decisive rounds. "We came in after that, and it was over."
That's what Judge does, and that's what the Yankees did with him in training. He hit .346 with five homers, 10 RBIs and a goal of 1,096 in the 14 games that he faced against the Red Sox in 2018. The Yankees were 8-6 in those games.
Luis Severino put the Yankees in confidence with a good start Wednesday.Frank Franklin II / Associated Press
These figures may not mean anything when the series of divisions begins Friday, but having Judge in Yankees training means something.
"It's not just him," said Private Aaron Hicks. "We missed Didi [Gregorius] and Gary [Sanchez] for a moment too. I think it's great that we have our entire range. "
They have their line-up and their pen, which followed Severino on Wednesday and rang the A's. This marker makes the Yankees scary, but so does the lineup when it's at full power.
The Yankees will also have enough to fear in the formation of the Red Sox. On Wednesday, no one in the Yankees clubhouse made rash predictions about the next round.
"They have an excellent team there," said the judge.
"It will be great," Severino said.
Wednesday felt more like an appetizer for this series, a warm-up number, a chance for the Yankees to show who they are. Severino pitched fastball after fastball in a top of the first 1-2-3 throw by 10, then Andrew McCutchen started late in the game. Judge followed with his 116.1 mph missile, 427 feet left field to make it 2-0.
It was the the hardest homer in the playoffs since the statcast measurements on MLB.com began in 2015. This record only represents seven runs, as Giancarlo Stanton hits a stronger one.–estimated at 117.4 mph and 443 feet–in the eighth.
At that time, the songs "We want Boston" became stronger and stronger. At that moment, the yankees of the pirogue had to feel the same thing.
And in Boston, the Red Sox had to understand that they were about to meet the best wild card team in MLB history.
You still fear them.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
Follow Danny on Twitter and talk to baseball.
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