The Yankees are in control but not in the clear

The Yankees find themselves in pole position right now, and that’s not just based on what everyone has seen these first two games of the American League Championship Series.Strictly going by the eye test, this has been a mismatch and promises to be one, even if the Guardians can scratch out a win or two on home grounds.We won’t go so far as to say this has the feel of a No.

16 seed playing a No.1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but it does feel something like a 3 playing a 14.

In that scenario, the underdog team has won 17.2 percent of the time — 23 out of 133.So not impossible.

But not something you’d be eager to bet your mortgage on.And that tracks.Because in the long history of best-of-seven series in MLB’s postseason — which goes back as far as 1905 and has been the standard for the World Series since 1922 and for the league championship series since 1985 — teams that have fallen into a 2-0 hole have gone on to win just 16 percent of the time.Not impossible.But again: Don’t bet your car.So we don’t only have our eyes to tell us the Guardians have their work cut out to beat the Yankees four out of five times, we also have history books.

Fifteen teams have accomplished that improbable task in the 91 times it’s happened since the Cubs jumped out 2-0 on the Tigers in the 1907 World Series (the Tigers managed a tie but lost the series 4-0-1.)The Yankees have been involved in seven of them — four times when they were the ones to spin 0-2 down into a series win, three times when they were the team to squander pole position and watch 2-0 to the good dissolve into dust.In all seven of those cases, there’s at least one lesson to be gleaned to keep the Yankees on the proper path, and to make sure the Guardians don’t replicate Oakland, which last March knocked off No.3 seed Kentucky as a 14 and kicked John Calipari all the way to the Arkansas border.

Herewith, seven lessons for the 2024 Yankees.By 1955, the Yankees had faced the Dodgers five time...