It looks like Oakland will do the bullpen thing

This we know: 

It will be a long, hard slog. It will be Vietnam, Frazier-Ali, Cavanaugh... It will start after dinner and run deep into the October night, if not into the morning of December. It will end with a stadium of thunderous cheers or angry boos. It will not end quietly. If the team doesn't fight, the fans sure will.

Apparently, Oakland will start a one-inning reliever, Liam Hendricks, a righty to face our right-leaning first three (assuming Hicks doesn't bat third.) He's done it eight times this season, given up two earned runs. From there, who knows? Expect the kitchen sink. Everybody will rested. It will be like an All-Star game: Pitchers throwing one-inning gas, while replacements warm in the pen. But it won't be an all-star game, because instead of Catfish Hunter warming up, there will be at least one Atlee Hammaker, or maybe a Colter Bean. 

The beauty of the bullpen thing is that hitters never get to see a pitcher twice. They're always catching up, always trying to adjust. And let's face it: "adjusting" has not exactly been a Yankee strength. We are a team of homer-hitters, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. It reminds me of what critics in Syracuse used to say of Jim Boeheim's early seasons: The team that lives by the jumpshot... dies by the jumpshot. We live by the homer/strikeout. That could also kill us.

The trouble with the bullpen thing is that it only takes one clunker to mess up everything. Also, at some point, somebody has to take the reins and pitch a second inning. The A's can't throw nine pitchers at us, so by the eighth or ninth, their ranks could be depleted. If we can leap on one pitcher, just one, we can take the lead and try to hold on, the baseball version of running out the clock.

Beware that mentality, though. When the 2018 Yankees go to sleep for an inning, they often nap for five.

I can never summon great optimism on the eve of such a game. It's just not inside me. I see Dellin Betances entering in the seventh and walking the lead-off man. From there, a five-run lead can evaporate. I see the same with El Chapo in the eighth or ninth. Both are loaded members of the 100-Keg Club - kegs of dynamite, that is. Either can strike out the side, or leave with runs in, the bases loaded, and nobody out. But I cannot imagine a Yankee victory without them. No Yankee starter is going to throw past the seventh, and once our bullpen takes over, all bets are off.

We will have to save our juju for the seventh inning onward. It's going to a long, grinding night. Nothing comes easy in October. But we will have the last at-bat, and they will be almost out of pitchers. That's not nothing.

Let's all put our predictions on the record tomorrow and Wednesday. Let's see who can tell the future.