No break for Yankees as they play Astros in split doubleheader

So much for easing into the second half.

No, it’s right back into the fire for the Yankees.

After one of the best first halves in franchise history, a Major League Baseball-best 64-28, good enough for a 13-game lead in the sport’s best division, the American League East, the Yankees start the second half with an old nemesis.

The Astros, against whom the Yankees will play a split doubleheader at Minute Maid Park on Thursday.

“It’s two of the best teams in the AL going after it  for two right after the break,” Aaron Judge said in Los Angeles earlier this week at the All-Star Game, where he was joined by teammates Gerrit Cole, Jose Trevino, Clay Holmes, Nestor Cortes and Giancarlo Stanton. “It’s going to be exciting. Every time we go to Houston, the crowd’s always into it. Always a packed house, always competitive. We’re looking forward to it.”  

Though the Yankees appear as if they could coast to the best record in the AL, and the home-field advantage in the postseason that comes with it,  the Astros start the second half within striking distance at 59-32.

Included in that record is a 3-2 mark against the Yankees. Four of those games came in late June at the Stadium, with the clubs splitting an eventful series.

The Yankees won their two games on walk-off hits by Judge — an RBI single in the ninth inning of the series-opening 7-6 victory June 23 and a three-run homer in the 10th inning of a 6-3 win in the series finale.

In between, the Yankees were shut down by Justin Verlander in a 3-1 loss and were no-hit by three Astros pitchers in a 3-0 loss a day later. In the June 26 come-from-behind win, the Yankees didn't have a hit before Stanton’s seventh-inning homer.

“We know that they’re tough,” Cole said of the Astros at the All-Star Game. “Kind of try to approach it with maybe less gravitas, try to treat it like another game. But it’s not. There’s going to be a little more adrenaline.”

Cole and other Yankees have acknowledged what feels like is inevitable — that for the Yankees to get to their first World Series since 2009, they’ll likely have to go through the Astros, a team that knocked them out of the wild-card round in 2015 and then the ALCS in 2017 and 2019.

“That’s certainly a fair outlook,” Cole said in June of an October collision course with Houston. “Obviously a complete team. We all know that good pitching and defense wins a lot of games in October. Obviously, you’re going to have to have clutch hitting and magical offense as well, but there’s just not a lot of weaknesses over there. They can beat you in a lot of different ways, the same way we can beat you in a lot of different ways. So certainly a fair assumption. But we have to get there first.”

That, barring the absolute unforeseen, seems inevitable for both the Yankees and the Astros, the lone drama being who secures the top seed and home-field advantage.

The Yankees remain the favorite to end up with the league’s best record. They’ve played the most consistently among the contending teams, accomplishing that with the deadly combination of the league’s best starting rotation, the top-scoring offense and, despite some injuries to it, a shutdown bullpen.

There’s little reason to expect — other than a horrendous run of injuries — much of that to change in the second half.

Just don’t tell that to the clubhouse, an overall perspective Judge, answering a question about his own first half, gave voice to in Los Angeles.

“The minute I’m satisfied is the minute I kind of sit back and take a break and say, ‘Look how far I’ve come,’ ” Judge said. “Then you get complacent and I don’t want to get complacent. There’s still a long way to go. This team, and myself, we set ourselves in a good position, but there’s still a lot of baseball to play. The minute I sit back in a comfy chair and say, ‘Wow, you’ve got 30 homers, you’ve got this and that,’ someone’s going to pass you or the next team is going to start creeping up on you in the standings. You’ve got to keep the blinders on, basically.”