Would you like a little chalk with your chaos? While the fifth-seeded San Diego Padres and sixth-seeded Philadelphia Phillies are playing in the NLCS, the American League gives us the two teams that carried the conversation all season in the junior circuit: The 106-56 Houston Astros, playing in their sixth straight ALCS, and the 99-63 New York Yankees, returning to the ALCS for the first time since 2019.
This is what we've been waiting for all season, especially after Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and Astros owner Jim Crane got into a little wrangling of words back in the spring when Cashman whined that the Yankees hadn't reached any World Series because of the Astros' cheating.