It’s always interesting and informative listening to fans speak of teams and players on the other side, especially during the playoffs. If you have friends who are Yankees fans and like to engage in text threads, it can be fun reading their on-the-run scouting reports of the Astros, for instance.

“Springer and Bregman are superheroes. (but we can get them out) …”

“Jose Altuve, man. He kills us. …”

“And don’t get me started about Correa. …”

“Verlander and Cole … ugh …”

“We can get in Greinke’s head. …”

On and on. A lot of times, a lack of familiarity is good, because it brings the essential, visceral emotions a fan feels to the surface: no filters, no editors, just real-time anxiety and real-time joy and real-time passion.

It’s even more fun on the other side. I have a friend who’s an Astros fan. He and I swapped a good 50 texts this weekend. He possesses the usual respect for the usual suspects on the Yankees: DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge and Masahiro Tanaka. He is terrified by the Yankees bullpen. He has night sweats about Gleyber Torres.

But one Yankee, more than any, fascinates him. Gary Sanchez. This is just a sampling of the regular terrors that filled my iPhone this weekend:

“Every time he swings, it feels like he’s going to hit it to the moon. …. That swing, that swing, that swing. … I can’t believe we got him out there. … God, he terrifies me. … I can’t believe we got him out there. … Guaranteed, this is where he hits one 500 feet. … I can’t believe we got him out there … We can’t let this inning get to Sanchez. … I can’t believe we got him out there. …”

Such is the pull that Sanchez has for people who don’t see him every day, and it likely matches, heartbeat for heartbeat, the frustration that so many Yankees fans — who do get to see him every day — have with their most frustrating player. Because every year, a lot of Yankees fans go through similar rhythms when it comes to Sanchez, a four-part passion play that goes something like this:

• This is his year. Just watch.

• He’ll break out of it soon. Too good not to.

• PLAY ROMINE! FOR GOD’S SAKE, PLAY ROMINE!

• Did you see the ball he hit yesterday? Holy [smokes], dude! …

He can engage both your brightest optimism and your darkest pessimism. You will call for him to be traded at least twice every year, and then he will force you to rescind those impulses when he goes on a tear, because those tears can be epic. And they wallpaper a lot of the bad stuff.

And then we get to October. And October has not been kind to Gary Sanchez. In 88 postseason at-bats, he has 16 hits, and he has struck out 32 times. He slashes .182/.229/.386. His OPS is 230 points lower in the playoffs than the regular season. In this October, he is 2-for-21 with eight strikeouts and zero extra-base hits. And he was the hitter in perhaps the most talked-about plate appearances of Game 2.

There were two outs and two on in the top of the 11th. The Astros had summoned hard-throwing Josh James to face Sanchez. The Yankees, reduced to using exiled starter J.A. Happ because their bullpen was empty, were desperate for a run. And Sanchez is a run producer by trade — and a run producer overdue for a big moment. It was a moment thick with tension at Minute Maid Park.

(I honestly thought my friend the Astros fan might forget to breathe during the at-bat. It was that tense if you had a dog in the hunt. Yankees fans surely understand.)

And, well … Sanchez made an out.

Actually, that doesn’t quite do the moment justice. He actually made THREE outs. He hit a pop foul so high that it hit the roof, rather than settle in Alex Bregman’s glove. He swung and missed at strike three, a call the umpire whiffed on, too, because he claimed Sanchez tipped it. And then he stared at strike three on the very next pitch in what was the most obvious make-up call you’ll ever see.

(Quoth my friend: “I can’t believe we got him out there. …”)

And, look, this has to stop, sometime. Sanchez is too good a hitter. And the Yankees need him to approximate the best version of himself, especially if Giancarlo Stanton is going to miss time, or be at less than peak efficiency. Sanchez has it in him. We’ve seen that plenty. But he has 2-for-21 funks in him, too. Eventually, those usually get worked out.

The Yankees need eventually to show up as soon as possible. Game 3 would be nice.