Yankees-Twins Wild Card Game Now Set

The inevitable is now a reality. The New York Yankees will play their one-game wild card playoff game Tuesday night against the Minnesota Twins. The match-up, which has been an inevitability for several weeks became official Saturday after the Red Sox finally clinched the AL East with a win over Houston. The Yankees beat the Blue Jays 2-1, Saturday, but, with one game left to go, Boston held a two-game lead.

It's not like any Yankee fans are losing sleep over this. The team wasn't expected to win the division this year, and had found themselves three, and sometimes, four games out of first place since mid-July.

The question now is, can the Yankees slip by the Twins? During the season, New York was 4-2 against Minnesota, including sweeping them at the Stadium in September. But as we all know these wild card games are just that, wild and unpredictable. Whatever the Yankees did against Minnesota in the regular season can be tossed out the window Tuesday.

Nobody should sleep on the Twins. While the Yankees handled the Twins easily last month, this is a good baseball team in Minnesota. They won 84 games for a reason. They feature four hitters who have more than 20 home runs, including sluggers Brian Dozier (34 HR, 98 RBI) and Miguel Sano (28 HR, 77 RBI). Against the Yankees both Sano and Dozier did well. Sano hit .333 with two homers and four RBI against Yankee pitching. Meanwhile, Dozier had six hits in 19 at bats (.316) with a triple, double and an RBI.

Let us not forget that Joe Mauer is still in the game, and still having an impact; he was hitting .305 entering Saturday's action, while the Twins best hitter is Eddie Rosario who hit .298 with 27 homers in the regular season. This is a good team.

It will be imperative for Yankees ace Luis Severino to be on his A-game on Tuesday. Not only will he have to deal with a powerful lineup, he will match-up against veteran Ervin Santana, who won 16 games this season, and led the Twins in strikeouts with 167. The last time Santana pitched against New York, he held the Yankees powerful offense to just two runs in a Bombers 2-1 win on September 18.

In his own right, Severino has been fantastic. In a year where the Yankees have seen a lot of flux in their rotation, Severino stood out as the team's ace. He won 14 games, including pitching a 3-0 record and a 2.10 ERA in September. He is the right man for the job on Tuesday night.

Against Minnesota this year, he lasted only three innings, allowing three runs on five hits before exiting. The Yankees eventually won the game, but the Yankees hope that he can fare much better this time around.

What gives the Yankees the biggest edge on Tuesday is their own lineup. Go up and down the Yankee order and there is superstars power all over it. Led by Aaron Judge and his 52 home runs, Gary Sanchez and his 30 homers and the return of Greg Bird -- the Yankees can thump the ball out of the part at the drop of a hat. To see how this lineup matches up against Santana on Tuesday will be epic to watch.

Now that the division chase is over, the Yankees focus is now squarely on the Twins. Bring on the postseason.