Yankees still have outside shot to chase down Blue Jays and win AL East title

BALTIMORE — If one is inclined to use the gambling outlets that Major League Baseball encourages its fans to spend their money on, the Blue Jays beating out the Yankees for the AL East title remains the safe bet.

But, though the Yankees winning the division title remains a tremendous long shot — with the far more likely proposition being that they will secure the league’s top wild-card spot — it isn’t impossible.

Because before the Yankees took the field Thursday night for the start of a four-game series against the Orioles, they received good news from Tampa, where the Rays beat the Blue Jays.

That meant a victory by the Yankees — who took a 7-0 lead in the top of the seventh with Max Fried on the mound — would bring them within three games of Toronto (the Blue Jays do own the tiebreaker after winning the season series, 8-5).

Each team has nine regular-season games left beginning Friday, and the schedule, at least on paper, favors the Yankees.

After four games against the Orioles (72-80), the Yankees will return home to face the White Sox (57-96), from whom they took three of four in Chicago in late August, and then the Orioles next weekend to conclude the season.

The Blue Jays will play at the Royals (76-77) before finishing the season at home against the Red Sox (83-70), who are in a photo finish for a wild-card spot, and then the Rays (75-78).

The Yankees have been playing well of late, winning 16 of their last 23 and 23 of their last 34 going into Thursday.

“Trying to win every ballgame,” Cody Bellinger said. “Right now, we’re playing well and trying to keep it rolling.”

While not rolling to the degree the Yankees have been, the Blue Jays for the most part have been playing well, going 15-10 in their last 25 games.

On the surface, the Yankees have the schedule advantage, but the seven games against the Orioles do present some land mines. Though they came into Thursday in last place in the AL East, where they’ve spent most of the season as one of baseball’s most disappointing teams in 2025, the Orioles have not played like a last-place team in the season’s second half, going 29-28 since the All-Star break.

And the Orioles came into this series 3-3 against the Yankees this season, though both clubs have vastly different looks from the last time they met, June 20-22 at the Stadium.

“I don’t see them that way,” Aaron Boone said Thursday of the Orioles’ last-place standing. “I mean, it’s a team that’s played pretty well for a few months, probably more in line with who everyone expected them to be at the start of the year. And over the last month they’ve gotten healthier in the starting rotation, so their starting pitching’s been good. So we know it’s a good team, we know that it’s a formidable team, and not anywhere close to a last-place-caliber team.”

Boone, who in his 12 years in the big leagues played on more non-contending teams than contending ones, said the notion of the former kind of team playing the role of “spoiler” can be a real incentive.

In 2021, his fourth year as Yankees manager, Boone experienced that at the hands of the Orioles. That season the Yankees’ performance in September against a long-out-of-contention Orioles team that finished 52-110 proved costly. The Yankees went 3-3 in two September series against Baltimore that year and finished 92-70, the same record as the Red Sox. Boston owned the tiebreaker, meaning that year’s one-game wild-card game was at Fenway Park instead of Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees lost, 6-2.

“Obviously, the grind of the season and when you fall out of things, these become more meaningful games when you’re playing teams in the hunt that are playing for a lot,” Boone said. “Yeah, I think it’s a motivating factor for teams that have fallen out of the race, absolutely.”

Stanton milestone

Giancarlo Stanton, who served as the DH Thursday, entered the night with 449 career homers. Stanton, playing in his 1,717th game, was in a position to become the fifth-fastest (in terms of games) to hit 450. Mark McGwire reached that plateau the fastest (1,524 games), followed by Babe Ruth (1,585), Alex Rodriguez (1,684), and Harmon Killebrew (1,713). Stanton’s two-run double on Thursday night capped a four-run seventh that gave the Yankees a 7-0 lead.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.