Yankees need to know it’s not the wind making them come up short

The Yankees come home now after scoring just two earned runs in two games at Minute Maid Park, then talking afterward about the roof being open and a mean old wind blowing through there on Thursday night, allegedly helping the Astros and hurting them because Aaron Judge’s ball wasn’t a Yankee Stadium home run in the 8th inning. It was determined afterward that Judge’s ball would have been a homer at the Stadium, and only at the Stadium. Maybe so. Maybe he’ll hit them far enough at the Stadium this weekend and look like the home run king of baseball and keep the Yankees from getting rolled by the Astros again.

Here is the chance for the Yankees to prove, once and for all, that the Astros simply aren’t better than they are. Better, deeper, more talented.

Five years ago, the Yankees came home after losing the first two in Houston and won three straight on 161st St., coming as close to making it to the World Series as they have since 2009. Now they have to get at least two, with their two best pitchers going, to change the narrative with the Astros once and for all. Or they go home again being not good enough to beat Houston, and not good enough to make it to the Series, and just plain not good enough, period.

By the time the weekend is over we will know if these Yankees are something more than the champs of being pretty good, of only being able to dominate the American League Central at this time of year; if they’re about fall short of the Fall Classic. Again.

This much, though, we know already: When you don’t hit, you’re not supposed to leave town giving a weather report. Maybe this is the weekend when the Yankees look like a more complete team than the Astros, who have become the kind of perennial contender the Yankees ought to be.

“Who would have thought, I think the roof open kind of killed us,” Aaron Boone said when it was over, for now and maybe for good, in Houston. “I think it’s a 390[-foot] home ball [that Judge hit] … I didn’t think he smoked it like a no-doubter, but it felt like his homers to right.”

So Judge didn’t get a Yankee Stadium home run in Houston on Thursday. Giancarlo Stanton just missed one Wednesday. Now they all get the chance to change things around with their season on the line. They get the chance to win tough games at home the way the Astros just did. But they sure can’t do it sounding like Al Roker with their post-game analysis. What they need to show, truly, is that they can hit Astros pitching when these games are on the line.

Five years ago, even after they won three straight at the Stadium and everything felt like a Yankee October rising again, they went back to Houston and scored one run over the last two games. They went back to Houston this week and scored just four runs in two games because Framber Valdez gifted them with a couple of runs on a ball hit back to him that he turned into Great Adventure.

The Astros weren’t great in Houston. They weren’t. The Astros got to pitch their ace, Justin Verlander, in Game 1 and the Yankees had to wait for Gerrit Cole to pitch Game 3. But the Astros hit three homers in Game 1 and Alex Bregman made the biggest swing of the series so far with his three-run shot off Luis Severino. Valdez and the Astros’ bullpen did the rest. And the Yankees left Houston, for now, acting as if the answers they needed were somehow blowing in the wind.

As well as the Guardians played against the Yankees in the division round, the way they pushed the Yankees to five games, it is clear that the Yankees are up against the varsity now, not just the best team in their league this season but, over time, the best team in the league for a long time, whether they stole signs or not. And by the way? It’s probably past time for Yankee fans to stop litigating the past with the Astros, because they’ve got their hands full right now, needing to get a couple of games and four out five against Houston if they want to make it to their second World Series in the past 19 seasons.

The Astros? They’re trying to make it two in a row and four over the last six seasons. For now, all the Astros have done is win two close games at home. They’ve been better so far, by just enough. Now the Yankees throw their ace at them, and another guy – Nestor Cortes – who looked more like their ace across much of this season. They won three in a row, Games 3 and 4 and 5, five years ago. They can do it again.

Once and for all, they get their chance to show that the Astros aren’t better, and not just at this time of year. There’s no roof at Yankee Stadium. But if the Yankees do fall short again, in a season that began 64-28, then there will still be the idea that the roof has come crashing down on them again in the baseball month they owned for most of the last century.

You want to finally be better than the other guys? Be better now. Or never.

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