Yankees Mailbag: The aftermath of another Rivalry victory

The idiot that said, "Harper is coming" asks: Was that fun or what? Share some of your feelings about the absolute destruction of the Boston Red Sox in historic fashion.

The Wild Card Series ended up being a rout, and while I definitely favored the Yankees over the Red Sox I wouldn't have guessed the final tally would see New York put up 18 runs to Boston's two. The games were definitely tense for a good bit before they became stomps, as Boston's starters were doing well to keep pace with the Yankees' until they were both pulled to disastrous effects. I think that the gap in managerial experience in this series was abundant, as now-no-longer-interim manager Chad Tracy didn't have much of a feel for when he should've trusted his starters. The more egregious case was Sonny Gray, who was only at 70 pitches and as he stated his own case in the post-game was an extremely effective pitcher going through the order a third time, whereas Payton Tolle was at least a little deeper into his pitch count. Meanwhile, Boone and company were ahead of the game in constructing their Wild Card Series roster and the Yankee skipper got to pull out all the stops in playing to his matchups with great success. I imagine the ALDS roster will be a little more balanced in the number of pitchers versus position players making Boone's choices in this regard a little more difficult to make going forward, but this team has had to make the most of their platoons throughout the year and I think that can be a real strength for them now in the Postseason.

As for the damage they did once they got to that Boston bullpen… my goodness. It felt like an entire summer's worth of frustration unleashed into near-perfect execution. We'll get into the specifics of their turnaround in a minute, but a Ben Rice masterpiece followed by a team-wide throttling was absolutely thrilling to watch. Everybody got involved, from the most downtrodden names in the middle of the year to the stars they were counting on, and it felt like a resounding answer to the question looming over everyone's head about how far this team could go if Aaron Judge isn't going to be available.