We Want Boston? Yankees Get Boston after Pounding A's

YANKEES 7 - ATHLETICS 2 
NYY Win Wild Card Game 

Yankees fans were chanting "We Want Boston" after Luke Voit blew open the AL Wild Card game with a three-run triple in the bottom of the sixth inning. Now, they will get their wish.

An up and down season by Yankee standards that still produced 100 wins during the regular season, came down to a win-or-go-home playoff game against the Oakland A's, and New York responded by pounding the A's and Bob Melvin's ridiculous bullpen strategy to smithereens.

Melvin and the A's convinced themselves that they didn't need to use a starting pitcher in the wild card game, relying on the new trend in baseball where teams call upon a select reliever to "open" the ball game. In short Melvin turned the most important game of the season into a straight up bullpen day. The strategy proved fatal.

Liam Hendricks who had only 24 innings under his belt coming into the game, served up a meatball to Aaron Judge who crushed the ball over the left field wall for a two-run homer, sending Yankee Stadium into a tizzy.

While the A's did settle things down with Lou Trivino over the next three innings, it was Luis Severino who was absolutely dealing for the Yankees. The Yankees ace breezed through the A's lineup for the first three innings of the game, before getting in and out of trouble in the fourth. In the fifth, Severino ran into some serious trouble, surrendering back-to-back singles to Jonathan Lucroy and Nick Martini. Manager Aaron Boone rolled the dice and took Severino out of the game for his set-up man, Dellin Betances.

Betances didn't disappoint.

He retired both Matt Chapman and Jed Lowrie on lazy fly outs, and finally struck out Kris Davis swinging to get out of the biggest jam of the night. It's fair to say that Betances' effort won the game for the Yankees at this point, it was that huge.

Later on, the Yankees continued to take advantage of Melvin's hideous bullpen strategy by pounding both Fernando Rodney and closer Blake Treinen, who Melvin inexplicably inserted into the game with the A's down 3-0 in the sixth inning.

First Judge and Aaron Hicks hit back-to-back doubles to produce a run off Rodney to chase him out of the game. Once, Treinen came in the Yankees offense exploded. Rookie Luke Voit worked an epic nine-pitch at bat before crushing a 3-2 slider off the top of the right field wall to plate two more runs, making it 5-0. Voit would later score on a Didi Gregorious sac fly to make it 6-0.

Giancarlo Stanton put the exclamation point on the night when he crushed a Treinen pitch over the left field foul pole to push the Bombers lead to 7-2 in the eighth. That was all she wrote.

The Yankees now head to Boston to open up what will be an epic best-of-five showdown with their hated division foes. The Yankees-Sox ALDS will be the first time the two teams met in the LDS round of the playoffs. Of course both teams have played historic League Championship Series in the past. It will be the first time since the Yankees 2004 ALCS collapse that the two teams will be in the postseason. All the fun begins on Friday.