Yankees reveal the strategy they used to beat Dallas Keuchel

To defeat their greatest nemesis, the Yankees focused on the middle.

One more win against these potentially glass-jawed Astros, and they can expand their vision all the way from the Bronx to Southern California (probably). From the Canyon of Heroes to Cooperstown.

Ding-dong, Dallas Keuchel’s dominance of the Yankees is dead, and with it any remaining advantage held by his Houston club. In resounding fashion, the Yankees completed a home sweep of their favored American League Championship Series opponents, knocking out Keuchel in the fifth for a 5-0 victory in Game 5. Up 3-2, the Yankees will try to clinch their 41st AL pennant — and record a second straight series victory after losing the first two games — in Friday night’s Game 6 at Minute Maid Park.

“We needed to win here, and we were able to do that,” said Chase Headley, who tallied three hits, two of them off Keuchel. “And obviously, to beat (Keuchel), you really do something if you’re able to beat a pitcher like that.”

“I thought we swung the bats pretty good tonight, especially considering who we’re facing,” Joe Girardi said.

Keuchel entered the night with a 6-2 record and 1.09 ERA in eight career starts against the Yankees, a track record that included the 2015 AL wild-card game and Game 1 of this series. To finally solve the bearded lefty, who allowed four runs and seven hits with a walk in 4 ²/₃ innings, the Yankees carried a specific approach to their at-bats with him.

“See the ball in the middle of the plate and react from there,” Todd Frazier said. “His ball moves so much, if I’m thinking middle of the plate, anything to the left or right most of the time is going to be a ball. That’s how he wins games. He gets guys off their approach and swinging at balls. Today, when we got our strikes, we hit them pretty hard.”

“You’ve got to stay disciplined, but you’ve got to be aggressive,” Greg Bird said. “It kind of contradicts each other, but you’ve got to get him on the plate, and when you do, you’ve got to make it hurt.”

So when Starlin Castro ripped a two-out, second-inning double to left field, the ball sailing over Marwin Gonzalez and hitting the wall on a bounce, Bird let a couple of fastballs pass before swinging at a third one that caught enough of the plate, pulling it into the right-field corner to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead and their first postseason run against Keuchel after putting up 14 zeroes.

“He’s as tough as anybody on us. And to really break through, in the second inning … to get a run, I thought that lifted everybody’s spirits and gave us some confidence that we could get to him going forward,” Headley said. “We knew we weren’t going to bust it open and score seven off of him, but we could scratch a couple runs out, but that was going to be good enough with the way (Masahiro) Tanaka was throwing.”

They thought right. Aaron Judge doubled home Brett Gardner in the third inning for a 2-0 lead. And in the fifth, the knockout frame, Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius provided back-to-back RBI singles, the Stadium crowd giddily bidding farewell to Keuchel as he walked from the mound to the visitors’ dugout. He still struck out eight to that one walked, a ratio you take every day, and he allowed no homers. Yet Keuchel fell behind five of the seven Yankees to whom he gave up hits. That’s why he expended 86 pitches to get just 14 outs.

“Against a guy like that, the only way you’re going to break through is to grind them out, grind them out, grind them out,” Headley said. “And finally we were able to break through.”

With Astros stud Justin Verlander going against Luis Severino in Game 6, the Yankees have more work to do. After toppling Keuchel, though, anything seems quite doable. With each passing day, no task appears undoable for this magical, memorable Yankees team.