Our only chance is to win Game One! Or not.

ALL-CAPS called it first, and many of you followed up on it:  our one and only chance to win this ALCS is to take Game 1 against what we hope is an even rustier Zack Greinke than the one who showed up in Game 3 of the ALDS and lured Houston into an unforced pitching error.

Sure, the Yanks will lose the next two contests, to Verlander and Cole.  But then maybe we can beat Miley Cyrus or whatever "opener" they pitch at the Stadium in Game 4, and then best Greinke again in Game 5, and win one of two back in Houston against...

Aww, who'm I tryna kid?

There is no way on this green earth that your New York Yankees will beat this year's Houston Astros in a series where a rested and healthy Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole get two starts apiece.  Just not gonna happen, my friends.

Sure, things could go wrong.  Gerrit Cole could come down with the Mystery Flu that Pedro started blaming his Phillies' 2009 World Series loss on...ten years after the fact.

Justin "In My Previous Life I Was Gandhi" Verlander could be caught cheating by Kate Upton, who then stabs him in his pitching arm with a kitchen knife.  Or...we could put CC in to face Altuve and then, when Altuve bunts on him, CC, charging like a maddened water buffalo, could run down the little bastard like so much hyena road kill.

But somehow, I doubt that's going to happen.

For years and years, the Yankees beat teams in the World Series—such as the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers—who may have actually had better all-around lineups.  They did it with better pitching, especially better starting pitching.

When that wasn't the case, they often lost, as when the L.A. Dodgers swept them in 1963.

It was the same thing in the ALCS, where the Yanks won 10 of the first 11 such series they were in, and 11 of the first 13.  They've lost the last three—to Texas in 2010, Detroit in 2012, and Houston in 2017—mostly because they got outpitched.

Sure, they've won big playoff series against teams with better starters.  The 1996 and 1999 World Series come to mind, in which the Braves had three Hall-of-Famers.

The difference between then and now is that the Yankees had starters big enough to shut down their lineups.  In 1996, David Cone bested Tom Glavine in their matchup, and Jimmy Key and Andy Pettitte split their two starts apiece against Greg Maddux and John "I Can Strike Out the Babe" Smoltz, respectively—most spectacularly in Pettitte's 1-0 victory in Atlanta.

In 1999, Cone and El Duque went out in the first two games and each pitched seven innings of one-hit ball.  Tomahawk chop THAT, motherfuckers.  Clemens finished up by beating Smoltz in Game 4, a contest in which The Great One was so dominant and broke so many bats that he reduced the Braves to helpless laughter.

There is no starter of that quality on this Yankees team.  Not "Five Times Pettitte" Paxton.  Not Crapp.  Not the still recovering Severino.  Not even Tiger Tanaka, physically, though he still has the heart and brains for it.

And unlike those Series against the Braves, this Houston team has a lineup that is at least as good as the Yankees', and a bullpen that is at least very close to the Yanks' constantly overrated and underperforming stoppers.

The stunning thing is that this staff has largely been rebuilt since the last time the Astros faced and beat our Yanks in the ALCS just 2 years ago.  While a certain Cooperstown-bound GM has sat on his hands.  Take a look at the starters, then and now;

2017 Houston:

Verlander (acquired just weeks before):    15-8, 3.36
Keuchel (Yanks could have had, passed): 14-5, 2.90
Morton (Yanks could have had, passed):  14-7, 3.62
McCullers:                                                  7-4, 4.25

2017 New York Yankees:

Tanaka:                                                      13-12, 4.74
Severino:                                                   14-6,   2.98
CC:                                                            14-5,   3.69
Gray (acquired instead of Verlander):       10-12, 3.55

Houston had a clear advantage then, and in fact won on starting pitching.  But it was nothing as it is now:

2019 Houston:

Verlander:                           21-6, 2.58
Cole:                                   20-5, 2.50
Greinke:                              18-5, 2.93
Miley:                                 14-6, 3.98

2019 New York:

Paxton:                               15-6, 3.82
Tanaka:                               11-9, 4.45
Severino:                              1-1, 1.50
Happ:                                  12-8, 4.91

In other words, what had been a slight edge that Houston had over our boys has, in the course of the last two years, been extended into a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.

That is, what had been, collectively, Houston 50-24, 3.49 vs. New York 51-35, 3.72; became...Houston 73-19, 2.94 vs. New York 39-24, 4.34.

Granted, this is a canyon made wider and deeper by "The Slap" that eliminated the Yanks' top starter this year from the rotation, and the injury that kept Sevvy out until a few weeks ago.  But did anyone really expect Domingo German to be the deciding factor in this series?

And injuries are part of the game.  A good GM plans for them.  Ours certainly made up for them in many places this year...just not the rotation, because that would cost money.  And there we have it, our year-long theme.

Houston in five.  HAL will approve.  He likes astronauts.