The Kansas City Royals are opening up the American League Division Series on Saturday night against the New York Yankees.

Games 1 and 2 will be played in New York with first pitch Saturday coming at 6:38 p.m. ET. The Yankees won the American League East, earned the first-round bye and got the No. 1 seed in the American League playoffs. The Royals won the wild card series against the Baltimore Orioles in two games.

Gerrit Cole will take the ball for the Yankees in Game 1 while Michael Wacha toes the rubber for Kansas City. The Royals likely would have preferred to start Cole Ragans or Seth Lugo, but they each pitched in the wild card round. Ragans will pitch in Game 2.

According to Sarah Langs of MLB.com, Wacha will join some rare baseball history with his start.

Longest Span Between Postseason Starts – Wild Card Era

10/7/2006 – 10/20/2015 Chris Young: 9y, 13d
10/6/2007 – 10/9/2016 Rich Hill: 9y, 3d
10/3/2008 – 10/3/2017 Ervin Santana: 9y
10/12/2015 – 10/5/2024 Michael Wacha: 8y, 359d

h/t @MLBNetwork research squad

 Wacha was signed this past offseason after spending the 2023 season with the San Diego Padres. His signing was part of the Royals going from a 56-win team to a playoff team in just one offseason.

He went 13-8 with a 3.35 ERA this year, striking out 145 batters in 166.2 innings. Lifetime, he’s in the 12th year of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets, Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox, Padres and Royals. He’s gone 101-62 with a 3.89 ERA and helped the Cardinals get to the World Series in 2013.

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THOMAS COUNTY —One person died in an accident just before 10p.m. Friday in Thomas County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Ford F250 pickup driven by Kade  Homm, 18, Flagler, Colorado, was southbound on County Road 21 just south of the County Road CC Junction.

At the Y intersection of County Road 21 and a private drive, the pickup traveled  off the road  and struck a tree row. 

A passenger Emma C Brungardt, 21, Blue Rapids, Kansas, was pronounced dead at the scene and was transported to Baalmann Mortuary,

EMS transported Homm and passengers Alaura Crockett-Armijo, 20, Larned; Kerstin S. Tommer, 19, Newton; Lakeddah J. Downes, 18, Council Grove and  Emma G. Krase, 18, Galva, to Citizens Medical Center. All six were properly restrained, according to the KHP.

From long flights to irregular sleep to time zone changes, road games come with many challenges.

When it comes to October college football in Tempe, Arizona, you can add weather to the equation.

The Kansas Jayhawks will be walking into a literal inferno on Saturday at Arizona State, with game time temperatures expected to be hovering around 105 degrees. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning on Friday afternoon … and it remains in effect until Monday at 8 p.m. MST.

The NWS classifies an excessive heat warning as “dangerously hot conditions” that could lead to heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

This is nothing new for the Sun Devils, who deal with 100-plus degree temperatures from May through October. The Jayhawks, on the other hand, aren’t used to playing in this kind of heat. The temperature is expected to remain above 100 degrees until the sun goes down at 6:06 p.m. MST. The temperature should drop into the high 90s for the second half.

Arizona State’s first two home games of the season – Aug. 31 vs. Wyoming and Sept. 7 vs. Mississippi State – both kicked off at 7:30 p.m. MST, well after sunset. The Kansas-Arizona State game is scheduled to kick off at 5 p.m. MST, which means it will be played under a scorching sun for at least an hour.

“Once you’re above 90, it’s pretty darn hot all the way around,” Kansas coach Lance Leipold said earlier this week. “So it’ll be a challenge, but we can’t let it get to us.”

The game time temperature will rival the hottest ever recorded for Arizona State – and the top 5 hottest games were all played in late August and early September. To have a game this hot in early October is clearly an outlier.

Arizona State’s game vs. Sacramento State on Sept. 5, 2013 was the hottest game time temperature ever recorded in Tempe at 107 degrees. A close second was ASU vs. Eastern Washington on Aug. 31, 2002 at 106 degrees. Saturday’s game vs. Kansas could easily come in third.