Yankees Take Care Of Their Own Business And The AL East Is Officially A Race

Right before the Yankees started hitting in the eighth inning Wednesday night in New York, Alejandro Kirk hit a sinking liner that dropped in front of Wilyer Abreu.

It appeared Kirk singled to put two on for the Blue Jays in their attempt to mount a big comeback. About a minute later Kirk was seen slamming his helmet in the dugout after being thrown out at first base and soon the Yankees were officially tied, a little over a month after being 6 1/2 out.

The Yankees are contributing to a wild final few weeks of the playoff races featuring collapses by the Mets for the NL’s third-wild card, the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central after leading by 15 1/2 games and the Houston Astros not being able to fend off the Seattle Mariners, who are on a 16-1 run to claim their first AL West crown since 2001.

“It’s unbelievable, but that’s baseball, especially with the expanded postseason,” Judge said. “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 Yankees are doing what they’re supposed to by rolling past the 100-loss White Sox and enter the final four games with a chance at winning the division, though they would need to finish with at least one more win.

The Yankees lost eight of 13 meetings and their 1-6 showing in Toronto during a four-game series June 30-July 3 and a three-game series July 21-23 caused their ouster from the top spot.

At times it seemed like the Blue Jays could never anything wrong while it appeared the Yankees could not get out of their way.

From July 3-August 23, the Yankees were 21-22 while the Blue Jays were 28-16. The Yankees trailed by 6 1/2 games on eight occasions. The most recent was following a 12-1 home loss to Red Sox but the Yankees gradually made progress.

A seven-game winning streak sliced 4 1/2 games from the deficit. Going 7-5 in the gauntlet against Houston, Toronto, Detroit and Boston left the Yankees four games out and following the opening two games in Minnesota the deficit was five with 11 games to go.

Then the Blue Jays lost twice in Kansas City and ended a 4-1 loss to Boston almost at the same instant that Jose Caballero’s single scored Judge and sent the Yankees into the postseason.

Caballero’s single touched off a celebration with the normal scenes of players dousing each other with champagne and beer amid loud music in the middle of the clubhouse and away from the lockers. The vibes also had a scene of clinching merely being the first step with the potential second step of securing the division right in front of them.

Being there for the taking might explain why a mostly regular lineup took the field on Wednesday and when Judge reached 50 homers for the fourth time in his career to match Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa for the most in AL history, the Red Sox already held a three-run lead after tagging Max Scherzer early.

When Judge stepped in for his final at-bat and the Yankees on the verge of being tied in a division they led by seven games on May 28, he did so after a night when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was ejected for expressing some form of general displeasure with a called third strike by Gabe Morales.

The frustration led to manager John Schneider pointing out it is not the umpires messing things up for a team who defied expectations to get the AL East lead and added to the Yankee woes during their 25-35 stretch that spanned May 30-Aug. 5.

“First and foremost, we’re not losing because of umpires, all right? Let’s get that out there,” Schneider told reporters in Toronto. “We’re losing because we’re not scoring enough runs. It’s a borderline pitch. I think Vladdy is frustrated. I think a lot of guys are frustrated. Again, it’s not about a call here or a call there, it’s about stringing together good at-bats and productive innings. He didn’t say anything. I think the hand gestures were enough, and that’s what Gabe [Morales] told me. But again, 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.”

Right now, the Yankees are scoring plenty and charging their way to a potential division crown that many thought was a lost cause during a summer swoon. Whether they can finish it off will be next on the docket of a season where many teams experienced wild peaks and valley.

And Boone’s saying of it’s right in front of us, has never been more accurate.

“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 in the last couple of games,” Judge said.