It is a baseball festival on a Tuesday.

All the playoffs are beginning today, the wild card series, Cleveland and Detroit,

and a pitcher's duel in the eighth inning with the Tigers up to one.

The Cubs have taken on the Padres and the main event of the evening at 608 right here on the fan,

the renewal of the rivalry, the New York Yankees against the Boston Red Sox. And coming up in the

five o'clock hour, we will give you an opportunity to be in the building for game two tomorrow

night. Yankees Red Sox, it's on. Now, obviously, Jet fans are simultaneously disgusted.

And Yankee fans, the vibe I get, I know Sean, you are just one of them, but the vibe I get is a very cautious, like nervousness, like a weird, uneasy feeling.

And the feeling I'm getting from Yankee fans is that if you beat Boston, your confidence will shoot up.

That this is almost the, hey, let's get past this and I'll feel a lot better. But right now, I don't feel good because, A, the Red Sox played as tough in the regular season. Garrett Crochet is one of the best pitchers in baseball, blah, blah, blah. Is that a fair kind of feeling of the Yankee fan? Without being too dismissive of the Blue Jays and Mariners who I think would put up a tough fight down the line, I view this series in many ways. And because it's the best of three, two adds to this, semi like an ALCS for the Yankees in that regard. That if they got past this short series versus a nemesis for a couple reasons and the way this is lined up, I think a lot of us would even buy more into the fact that they were hot at the end of the year. Okay, they played a team that some of us didn't expect to beat. And now the Blue Jays and X will pull that card. I do believe that this series is everything for the Yankees. And the fans, more specifically. I agree with you for a different reason. I think the Yankees are the best team in the American League. Said that a lot. Yeah. I'll say it again. I mean, they got two good starting pitchers, really good starting pictures, great, you could say, and they have a lineup that's damaging. They have a lineup that's scored more runs than anybody else. Right. By a pretty good margin. hit more home runs than anybody else. No doubt. But I think the longer a series

goes, usually

the better team wins. When you're in a best of three, I mean, we have to understand. We're dealing with a crapshoot. I understand it as well as anybody. It's part of why I was all about just get in, just kidding, just get in. Right. A bad outing by your ace. It could be over. Changes everything very, very quickly. Best of five, a little bit more so the better team wins.

And I think by the time you get to a Best of five, a little bit more so the better team wins.

And I think by the time to get to a best of seven, the odds are just higher that the better team is going to win. But there is one misnomer that's really bothering me that I want to eliminate. You may have heard people say, and it's a fact, so it's okay to say, it's true, that if you win game one of the wild card series,

the success rate of advancing is 100%.

And while that is true,

I'm here to tell you that you know that's an amount. true that if you win game one of the wild card series, the success rate of advancing is 100%.

And while that is true, I'm here to tell you that you know that's an anomaly. That is not a real thing. It's what's only how many years? It's been 2022. Exactly. So you're talking about a three-year sample size. Exactly. There's four per year. So whatever that math adds up to. Well, when you think about it, it's also the wild card is, it's the team that normally was selling at the deadline that is now in the playoffs trying to be better than a team that probably wasn't selling at the deadline.

So it's just, it's a different calculator.

You can't use that for any measurement of what's going to happen going forward. And also I look at... Until you get at least a decade of evidence. I also look at this series particularly, like specifically Yankees Red Sox. I look at tonight's pitching matchup. And I mentioned earlier why I have more confidence in Freed than Crochet. But I get it. Crochet had a better year. So if you guys want to say the Red Sox have the pitching edge, I get it. I factor in experience.

I factor that in big time. The fact the Yankees have seen this guy four times already. But fine. Red Sox have the edge. When you look at Game 2, it's a little different. Brian Bezos had great success against you, but you guys finally got to him in his last start. We did. And Carlos Rodin is one of the better pitchers in all the baseball. If you get to a game three, and I get that Cam Schlittler will be making his first postseason appearance, and that would make me a little nervous, the Red Sox literally don't have a starting pitcher that they could pitch in game three. They're either going to go with a kid named Connolly

Early who's made four major league starts. And here's my favorite part. He's made four major

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