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Posted at 1:45 PM EST

8:05 PM EST. New York is back in the ALCS for the first time since 2012 and Houston has advanced to the semi-finals for the first time since a World Series run in 2005. Game 1 features the same pitching matchup from the 2015 Wild Card game at Yankee Stadium, which the Astros won 3-0. Of course, an awful lot has changed since then for both teams—Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez hadn’t even reached the majors yet, Alex Rodriguez led New York in home runs, and Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran were Yankees.Keuchel has owned the Yankees throughout his career, posting a 1.24 ERA and 52/7 K/BB ratio in 50 2/3 career innings. That includes six shutout innings in the 2015 Wild Card game and six shutout innings in his lone start versus New York this season back on May 11. By (somewhat controversially) using Justin Verlander as a reliever in Game 4 of the ALDS, the Astros forced themselves into sticking Keuchel atop the ALCS

Keuchel has owned the Yankees throughout his career, posting a 1.24 ERA and 52/7 K/BB ratio in 50 2/3 career innings. That includes six shutout innings in the 2015 Wild Card game and six shutout innings in his lone start versus New York this season back on May 11. By (somewhat controversially) using Justin Verlander as a reliever in Game 4 of the ALDS, the Astros forced themselves into sticking Keuchel atop the ALCS rotation, but based on his track record that may have been the plan all along.

Keuchel’s ERA spiked as his strand rate nosedived in 2016 because of the convergence of less grounders, less strikeouts and more homers allowed. All have edged back, more or less, in 2017. He keeps the ball on the ground at an elite level primarily by throwing a heavy sinker 47% of the time. The sinker induces grounders at a 75% clip, but he also sports a 50%+ ground ball rate on all of his other pitches (four-seam, slider, cutter, change-up). With a fastball that averages less than 89 mph, Keuchel certainly isn't your prototypical front-of-the-rotation starter but his combination of swing-and-miss off-speed pitches, and extreme ground ball inducing stuff, gets the job done. Still, the Yanks just faced the combination of Kluber, Carrasco and Bauer and so facing Keuchel is not going to faze them one bit. Keuchel has had several poor outings over the past two seasons.

New York started Luis Severino in this year’s Wild Card game and Sonny Gray in Game 1 of the ALDS, but now Tanaka gets his turn to headline the rotation. Tanaka was brilliant in Game 3 of the ALDS, shutting out the Indians for seven innings, and racked up 15 strikeouts in his final regular-season start. However, given that he allowed 35 homers in 30 starts overall this year, Houston’s power-packed lineup is a particularly daunting matchup for Tanaka. Tanaka gave up homers to Colby Rasmus and Carlos Gomez in losing the 2015 Wild Card game, and he got rocked for eight runs (on four homers) in his lone start against the Astros this season on May 14. That’s nice but the same thing was said about Tanaka when he faced the Indians in a small park and made them look like the Padres. Tanaka is a different pitcher now than he was in May. All that fly-ball talk is nonsense.

Tanaka’s groundball rate this year was 52%. His swing and miss rate since August is an elite 21%. Over his last 31 innings, Tanaka has struck out 39 batters and walked seven. Hitters are clearly having trouble making good contact against Tanaka’s varied arsenal and when they do hit the ball, it’s usually on the ground. Pay no attention to the media types that point out Tanaka’s “off-year”. Fact is, he struggled early on but has been one of MLB’s best pitchers for over two months. The days off between games doesn’t do the Astronauts any good either. No matter how you break it down, the Yanks have a seriously legit shot to win Game 1, as Tanaka is simply too good to be spotting a price like this to and so is that Yankees bullpen. Big time overlay here.

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