1. For 8 2/3 innings on Tuesday it looked like the Yankees would blow their biggest divisional opportunity of September against the worst team in the American League. They stranded two runners in the first, scored once but left the bases loaded in the second, stranded one in the third, another in the fourth, ran into an out on the bases in the fifth and the sixth, hit into an inning-ending double play in the seventh and left two more on in the eighth.
2. Trailing 2-1 in the ninth, the unlikely rally bats of Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells led off the inning with back-to-back singles to turn the lineup over with the tying run on second and the winning run on first with no outs. Volpe and Wells combined to see 10 pitches in their ninth-inning at-bats, but Trent Grisham swung at the first pitch he saw and hit into a 4-6-3 double play. Fortunately, the White Sox are the worst team in the AL for a reason and they couldn’t get the last out of the inning as Aaron Judge walked and Cody Bellinger walked with ball 4 to Bellinger coming on a wild pitch to score Volpe to tie game. Jose Caballero followed by grinding out a nine-pitch at-bat, which ended the game with a single to center to score Judge and give the Yankees a 3-2 win.
3. The win clinched a postseason berth for the Yankees and clinched my preseason wager of over 88.5 wins for the Yankees. When the Yankees improved to 42-25 on June 12, the rest of the season seemed like a formality in achieving more than 88.5 wins since they would need to go just 47-48 the rest of the way. But after falling apart from that day through mid-August, it took until Game 157 for them to win their 89th game.
4. The Yankees are headed back to the postseason, but how they are headed there is still unknown.
I laid out a path to winning the division in these Thoughts at the end of August, and for a while, it seemed like it may work out. But after the Yankees took two of three from the Blue Jays in early September, the Blue Jays took of three from the Astros and swept the Orioles. The math was ruined at the point and it would take a full-fledged Blue Jays collapse for the Yankees to have a chance. Well, that full-fledged collapse is on with the Blue Jays having lost five of six and set to face Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello the next two nights. The Yankees’ division odds went from 9.1 percent before the weekend to 25.7 percent after Tuesday’s win.
5. The Yankees are one game back of the Blue Jays in the loss column, but two games overall because of the head-to-head tiebreaker. So for the Yankees to overtake the Blue Jays (after blowing an eight-game lead to the Blue Jays during the summer), here is the updated table on what needs to happen:
| If the Blue Jays go … | The Yankees need to go … |
| 5-0 | X |
| 4-1 | X |
| 3-2 | 5-0 |
| 2-3 | 4-1 |
| 1-4 | 4-2 |
| 0-5 | 2-3 |
6. The Blue Jays are a mess. Their bullpen is in shambles, Bo Bichette is still out injured, they demoted Jose Berrios to a relief role and he didn’t take it well then Chris Bassitt was placed on the injured list and now Berrios will likely need to return to the rotation. They have played well above what their run differential suggests their record should be all season and now the jig seems to be up. If the season were a couple of games longer than 162, I would say there’s no doubt the Yankees win the division. Unfortunately, it’s not, and unfortunately, the Yankees annually treat the regular season like it will go on forever with a general lack of urgency throughout it. It’s never until the Yankees need to tell everyone “It’s right in front of them” that they begin to show a sense of urgency.
7. The only people rooting against the Yankees more than Blue Jays fans and Red Sox fans are the Steinbrenners. The Steinbrenners’ dream is for the Yankees to host the wild-card series and have that series go the distance and then have every round after it go the distance en route to a championship. If the Yankees receive the first-round bye, the Yankees lose two to three home game gates and everything that goes with them.
8. If the Yankees have to play in the wild-card series and survive it, I think they will reach the World Series. The AL is so bad. The only team I’m remotely worried about them playing is the Red Sox, simply because of Crochet and Bello’s success against them this season. If the Yankees are to play in the wild-card round then it will likely be against the Red Sox, and if they are to survive the wild-card round then that means the Red Sox are eliminated. The Mariners? The Yankees went 5-1 against them this season and swept them at a time when they couldn’t win a series against any team. The Tigers? No, I’m not scared of a team that bats Gleyber Torres second and has now blown the biggest division lead in baseball history. The Guardians? They are a dream scenario. A one-hitter team with no rotation and a bullpen that isn’t what it was at this time last year. The Blue Jays? Again, if the season were a few days longer, the Blue Jays would undoubtedly lose the division. They will enter the postseason with the worst bullpen of the entire field, and that will likely lead to their demise. The Astros? I’m only scared of the Astros because of what they have done to the Yankees in the past. But the Astros are no longer the Astros as we knew them from 2017-2023 and without Yordan Alvarez, they’re not to be feared.
9. Certainly, there’s always a “Be careful what you wish for” part of planning for the postseason. Any team can beat any team, especially in a best-of-3. The Yankees lost three-game series this season to the Diamondbacks, Giants, Orioles, Angels, Reds, Marlins and Rangers — seven teams that are currently outside of the postseason picture. The Yankees are the healthiest team in the AL with the best and deepest roster in the AL, though that doesn’t mean anything. The Yankees are their own worst enemy and needing to beat their own sloppiness and their own manager has been too much to overcome in their previous six postseason trips during the Boone era.
10. It’s Max Fried against a bullpen game for the White Sox. It’s about as lopsided a matchup as you could have in Major League Baseball, but there’s a reason John Sterling warned about predicting this game throughout his career. Tonight, I’m not only a Yankees fan, but also a huge Red Sox fan. Tonight, I’m a Garrett Crochet fan, knowing very well if the Yankees fail to win the division, it will be Crochet who the Yankees will likely face six days from now in the Bronx in the first game of the postseason. If the Yankees do their job and Crochet does his on Wednesday, the Yankees will be one win closer to avoiding him in a best-of-3.
Last modified: Sep 24, 2025
