This weekend is going to be the most exciting weekend of regular season baseball in ages.
The Red Sox, Yankees and Indians all have the same record, 92-64, with six games left to play. Each team is playing the first three games, curiously, against the bottom three teams in the AL East. Cleveland faces off against the Devil Rays (who swept the Tribe when they came to the Jake in August), the Yankees play the Orioles, and the Red Sox play the Blue Jays, starting the series off with a win earlier today. Cleveland then hosts the White Sox to finish the season, while Boston hosts the Yankees. Don’t be surprised if neither division is clinched until Sunday afternoon.
If these teams are smart, they will not look past their games tonight. Misery loves company, and teams that have been eliminated from playoff contention love taking other teams down with them (witness Detroit’s glee in beating the White Sox last night, which pulled the Indians to within two games of first in the AL Central). These first three games may look like pushovers, but they are anything but, and if the Sox, Yanks or Tribe lose two out of the next three, they put themselves in serious trouble.
And let’s not forget the NL West, where the Giants are staging a massive comeback on the sluggish Padres. The Giants have won 10 of 14 since Barry Bonds returned (say what you want about the guy, but no one impacts a game the way he does), while the Padres look gassed. The Giants could very easily take that division over. Meanwhile, the Phillies haven’t given up on the wild card, a game and a half down to Houston and playing the Mets and Nats. The ‘Stros, meanwhile, have to go through division arch rivals St. Louis and the Cubs, and those games will not be taken lightly.
Still, the real story here is the Sox/Yanks/Tribe scenario. Two of those three are going to the playoffs, and it’s entirely possible that all three of them could wind up going, depending on what the White Sox do. No matter how you slice it, this is gonna be fun to watch.
