Yankees: MLB announces full schedule for ALDS vs. Rays

We have a schedule for the Yankees-Rays ALDS that begins Monday night!

Get ready, Yankees fans: After a four-day break that felt like 400 following DJ LeMahieu’s series-winning hit in Cleveland, we will officially have baseball on Monday night.

And, most importantly, for several nights after that.

We learned on Saturday that the Yankees and Rays were set to resume their divisional battle on Monday night at 8:07 pm in the San Diego bubble, and on Sunday, we finally got the rest of the proposed schedule.

And, as expected, the most interesting two-team slate in the American League bracket will own the primetime space. The first two contests will pop off at 8:07, and every remaining game (the required Game 3 and the “as necessary” Games 4 and 5) will move up one hour to 7:10 PM.

This is what you want. All eyes on Yankees-Rays. All eyes and pressure on the No. 1 seed that has to play like the juggernaut they are in order to meet expectations.

The Yankees? Well, they weren’t supposed to be here. They were the five seed in Cleveland. They went 2-8 against the Rays in the regular season. They’re just happy to be here, right?

Can you see us smirking through the text here?

The Yanks have never wavered in their plan to meet Tampa Bay in the playoffs one last time. In fact, Luke Voit manifested the 25-mano-a-25-mano battle with the ’98ers on Sept. 23, when he casually told a reporter that the rematch would happen.

If MLB re-seeded like it likely should’ve, the Rays and Astros would be facing off, while the Yankees and Oakland A’s would get their first 2020 taste of each other.

But that’s not how it’s gonna be. Thanks to some ’20 weirdness in the bracket, we’ve got the Yankees and Rays in an unfamiliar ballpark and in the very same hotel, waiting out this interminable break while trying not to jump down each others’ throats.

It’ll be game on Monday night, though, and in primetime for as long as the battle shall last. It was always going to come down to these two, wasn’t it?

3 Yankees we’re officially worried about heading into ALDS

The New York Yankees need all hands on deck for their ALDS matchup against the Tampa Bay Rays, but there's reason to be concerned about these guys.