Yankees' goal of winning the AL East suddenly has become attainable
The Yankees' Ben Rice, left, and Max Fried walk to the dugout after the fifth inning against the White Sox at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
What appeared nothing more than an illusion as recently as last week is now very much in play for the Yankees.
Winning the division title.
Collectively, the Yankees sounded borderline delusional this month in talking about how taking the AL East remained their primary — and, in their minds, realistic — goal, even if the odds said something different.
With a loss to the Twins on Sept. 15, the Yankees fell five games behind the Blue Jays with 12 games left (that number technically was six games, as the Blue Jays owned the tiebreaker). A day later, they were five (six) games behind with 11 to play.
But the AL East title is very much a part of the overall insanity that has overtaken the sport in the last week — represented by the Tigers’ ongoing collapse in the AL Central and the no-one-seems-to-want-it back-and-forth for the third NL wild-card spot.
Because going into Thursday night, the Yankees and Blue Jays had 90-68 records. Toronto still has the tiebreaker, but entering Thursday, the clubs were going in polar opposite directions.
After a loss to the Red Sox on Wednesday night, the Blue Jays had dropped six of their last seven to give the Yankees life. With Wednesday’s 8-1 victory over the White Sox, the Yankees had won seven of their last eight and 10 of their last 13 to take advantage of the Blue Jays’ nosedive. (The Yankees had trailed by 6 1/2 games as recently as Aug. 23.)
“It’s unbelievable, but that’s baseball, especially with the expanded postseason,” Aaron Judge said Wednesday night after hitting his 50th and 51st home runs. “You’re going to have some moments like this where teams are going back and forth. When I go home, I turn on MLB Network, check all the scores, see what’s happening. It’s pretty amazing.”
The verbiage emanating from both clubs could not be more different.
“It feels like the sky is falling right now and it’s [expletive] not,” Toronto manager John Schneider said Wednesday, according to MLB.com. “We’ve got 90 wins, we’re in the playoffs, and if the season ended today, we’re winning the AL East. I want them to come in and not press. I want them to play confident.”
Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was ejected from Wednesday night’s loss, and there was plenty of griping afterward about the umpires, the ultimate losers’ lament (something the Yankees, particularly manager Aaron Boone, certainly have trafficked in plenty over the years).
To Schneider’s credit, he didn’t go there. “First and foremost, we’re not losing because of umpires, all right? Let’s get that out there,” he said. “We’re losing because we’re not scoring enough runs . . . I don’t want to feed into the narrative that the umpires are screwing us, because they’re not. We’re not scoring enough runs.”
The Yankees? It’s been roughly the same even-keeled pre- and postgame comments.
“I know from a sports standpoint, from a fan’s perspective, it’s been a crazy, exciting week in baseball,” Boone said before Thursday’s game. “But our focus hasn’t changed whether we’re five back, tied, one back, whatever. It’s, like, we’ve got another really important game today. We’ve tried to keep it simple and small like that and try and finish off a good series here today.”
The Yankees have done a lot of that of late.
After a 20-31 stretch from June 13-Aug. 10 dropped their record to 62-56, the Yankees entered Thurssday having gone 28-12 since Aug. 11. Winning Wednesday night gave the Yankees a series win in 11 of their last 13 series since Aug. 11.
The Yankees secured a playoff berth with Tuesday’s walk-off 3-2 victory — provided by Jose Caballero’s two-out RBI single in the ninth — and celebrated deep into the night.
But a day later, there was a laser focus on notching one more in the win column and continuing to make a race of it in the AL East.
“Walking through here throughout the day, everybody just had a focused, determined look in their eye,” Judge said. “They knew that we punched our ticket into the postseason and have an opportunity to go back to the World Series, but there’s still a greater goal ahead of us the last couple of games.”
A goal that seven days ago featured the longest of odds but one, with four games to play, that suddenly was more than attainable.
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.
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