Bob Costas will call Friday night's Twins-Yankees ALDS Game 1 on MLB Network with John Smoltz and Tom Verducci. THE DAILY caught up with Costas to ask how he changes his approach in the booth during the playoffs. Costas: “You have casual fans who tune in during the postseason who haven’t followed every storyline during the regular season. You have to lay out the broad strokes of each team’s season and some of the storylines coming in without emptying your entire briefcase.”
Here are four storylines Costas plans to address in the early innings:
- "This is the year of the home run. The overall Major League home run record was shattered, and it wasn’t even close. It wasn’t broken; it was shattered. Four teams hit more than the previous record. These are the two at the top of the list. The Twins hit 307. The Yankees hit 306."
- "The Yankees managed to win 103 games with 30-some players on the injured list, some of those 30 multiple times. It’s been one of the biggest stories in baseball all year long. We think of the Yankees as the team that has all the resources. But this year they were a team that had to be especially resourceful to get through it."
- "The Twins won 101 games. This was a team that was six games under .500 last year. That’s a major turnaround."
- "You want to dispense with this early because you have to recognize that the vast majority of the players in this game don’t have anything to do with this history, but the Twins have lost 13 consecutive postseason games -- 10 of the 13 to the Yankees. The Yankees have completely dominated them. They’ve beaten them in the Wild Card game two years ago, and they’ve beaten them four times in the Division Series since the turn of the century."
