Dallas Keuchel owned the Yankees in 2015

A year ago, no one could’ve pictured this.

The Yankees did not put up much of a fight, as they were retired in order in both the eighth and the ninth innings, and the Astros advanced to face the reigning American League Champion Kansas City Royals.

“Something that I mulled over for a couple days”, Girardi said.

It was easy to forget, while watching them outplay the New York Yankees on Tuesday, that the Houston Astros are still only two seasons removed from losing 111 games.

“We overcame a lot of adversity and played better than expected”, Gardner said. Even if you’re in the wild card, as we saw previous year with Kansas City, then you can go pretty deep.

Building on the success he’s had all year, the lefty used movement and change of speed on his four-pitch arsenal to limit the Yanks to just three singles and a walk with seven strikeouts. Left fielder Colby Rasmus hit one in the second inning and center fielder Carlos Gomez hit one in the fourth inning to give the Astros a 2-0 lead. Rodriguez came back off of his suspension for the entire 2014 season and shocked the baseball world by continuing to be an offensive force, hitting 33 dingers and driving in 86 runs. Girardi indicated that the Yankees are confident that their farm system can provide necessary talent, and with a number of big-name contracts, it’ll be hard to make big changes next season anyway. The Astros employ a ton of defensive shifts and that’s worked out in their favor more often than not this season. “It’s going to be fun”.

Keuchel was the only American League pitcher to win 20 games this year, and is a strong candidate for the Cy Young Award.

They clowned around during pregame introductions, and stayed loose the whole game. Then, in a New York minute, their postseason run was over.

New York’s starting lineup included a pair of rookies: Greg Bird at first and Rob Refsnyder at second.

“He (Tanaka) just made a few mistakes”, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.

Although Tanaka came to the Yankees having won 28 consecutive regular season victories, he has now lost his second straight postseason start, after dropping Game 6 of the 2013 Japan Series in a 4-2 complete-game defeat. Fans taunted Keuchel the moment he walked to the outfield for warmups. After Brett Gardner struck out, Chris Young grounded into a force out at second, but beat out the throw to first. “But to come in there and close out the game in Yankee Stadium is something I’ll never forget”, Keuchel told ESPN after the game.

“I believed that this team would be a winning team”, Luhnow said.

“I knew if we had a shot, I was going to give everything I possibly could into any game that I needed to pitch in”.

Girardi included three catchers on the 25-man roster: Brian McCann, John Ryan Murphy and Gary Sanchez.

Perhaps the 2015 Astros season is a best-case scenario for the 2017 Phillies if things break the right way for MacPhail and his yet-to-be-hired general manager. On this bigger stage, the left-hander was just as confounding, dropping his slider and two-seam fastball seemingly wherever he wanted in striking out seven.