Breaking down best first-round playoff matchup for Yankees

ST . PETERSBURG, Fla. — Look, cards on the table: We all know Billy Beane may have uttered the most truthful thing ever about the baseball playoffs when he called them a “crapshoot.” The easiest pathway toward ticking off the sport’s celestial gods and denting your own karma is to root too loudly for the match-ups to fall a certain way.

Especially for the first round, a best-of-five, in which the better team can go from heavy favorite to deep in the soup simply by losing one early home game.

That said? That’s a pretty relevant baseball parlor game this time of year. And while the men who actually coach, manage and play for the Yankees would never in a thousand years attach their names to a…