Sure, the second wild card in the American League is a mess, and kind of an embarrassing one, even. However, we did get some kind of progress in the postseason chase on Wednesday, as the Red Sox finished off their sweep of the Orioles while the Angels lost to the Indians. This officially clinched a postseason spot of some kind for Boston, and that’s a positive if you’re the Red Sox or one of their fans, because there is still no guarantee they’re going to win the AL East.
The Red Sox clinched a postseason spot, but the AL East race is ongoing
Thursday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the Red Sox and Yankees chase for the East, MLB’s netting issue, and Sherwin Williams backing out of donating to charity.
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The Yankees also won Wednesday, defeating the Twins — the team that holds the second wild card as of this writing — keeping pace with the Sox. New York is three games back of Boston and has hovered around that mark for most of September. While postseason odds show the Yankees with over a 91 percent chance at the playoffs, less than nine percent of that is through a potential division win.
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That doesn’t mean the Yankees will win the first wild card for sure, because three games isn’t a whole lot of games. But it’s going to be tough to take the division for a couple of reasons.
For one, the Red Sox keep winning at the same time the Yankees are winning, and it has used up many opportunities where New York could have gained ground. Second, the two teams are finished playing each other in 2017 already: The Yankees went 11-8 against the Sox during the regular season, so they certainly did their job against them, but no one else is helping them out.
Of course, the Yankees can’t shift all the blame to the teams Boston beats, as New York lost its season series to the A’s, the Angels, and the Pirates and has only gone 6-7 against the Blue Jays to this point in the season. Still, seeing the O’s drop consecutive extra innings games to Boston and then get blown out in the third game while New York is handling the Twins has to sting a little.
In the end, both of these teams are going to make the postseason. The Red Sox are guaranteed as much, and the Yankees aren’t all that far behind, considering they’re now seven games up on the Twins with a stranglehold on the first wild card. How these teams get there matters, though, since winning the division gets a team out of the wild card round and potentially into a series with the Astros instead of Cleveland, which has wiped the floor with the rest of the league for months now.
- The postseason is going to be fun, but, hoo boy, has September been mostly a letdown given all the potential for postseason races we had.
- You know you’ve done something right if you’ve reached a level that even Roger Clemens did not: Chris Sale joined Pedro Martinez as the only other Red Sox pitcher to reach 300 strikeouts in a season.
- While the races might not be what we hoped, there are still quite a few ongoing ones over the last days of the MLB season, and we’re keeping you posted on their progress (or the lack of it).
- The Royals have had the same single-season home run record since 1985, but Mike Moustakas broke it, and former record holder Steve Balboni congratulated him on the feat.
- Sherwin Williams isn’t donating $1 million to charity after Justin Upton’s homer ended up in the giant paint can in the outfield, because upholding a technicality is more important than giving to those in need.
- The A’s are giving fans a chance at free season tickets: All they have to do is hit a home run at the Coliseum.
- Here’s Jeff Passan on the shame of MLB’s refusal to properly net their ballparks, which resulted once again in injuries to a fan.
- Here’s an “actually” to attach to that column, though, just so you know all the details.
- Hanley Ramirez is using Tom Brady’s TB12 Method Workout now.
- Steven Souza is now the eighth Rays player in history to reach the 30-homer mark.
- Speaking of homers, you sure can hit a lot of them and still be terrible these days, as Sam Miller discussed at ESPN this week.
- Pat Neshek is mad at Zack Greinke for not signing autographs for him, but it should also be pointed out that Neshek didn’t exactly handle rejection well.
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