The Yankees could have champagne on ice Tuesday night in The Bronx.
How many bottles they would pop, if they take the series opener against the White Sox, remains to be seen.
The Yankees need just one win to secure a postseason berth, according to MLB, though they still have much more at stake over what could be a chaotic final week of the season around the American League, including an outside shot to chase down the Blue Jays for the division, or a likelier chance to claim the top AL wild-card spot for home-field advantage in the opening playoff series.
“It’s going to be a wild week, for sure,” manager Aaron Boone said on Sunday of the playoff race at-large.
“Hard to predict what’s going to happen and who’s going to be playing who. Certainly paying attention to it all, but in the end, it’s about handling our own business day in and day out. But it should be fun to watch it all unfold.”
Around this time of year, Boone often likes to say some version of “be careful what you wish for.” But the Yankees might be about to become fans of the Red Sox — to an extent and only as long as they are taking care of their own business in The Bronx.
The reality is that the Yankees enter the final week of the season trailing the Blue Jays by two games for first place in the AL East. The Blue Jays own the tiebreaker, courtesy of going 8-5 against the Yankees this season, so Boone’s club will have to make up three games with six games left if they are going to defend their division title.
And the Blue Jays are set to host the Red Sox on Tuesday night in Toronto for three games before finishing the season against the Rays, who have nothing to play for.
So while the Red Sox are the closest team to the Yankees in the wild-card standings — trailing them by three games, with the Guardians and Astros both four games back — the Yankees need them to win at least one game against the Blue Jays to keep their division hopes alive.
That will only be useful if the Yankees take care of business against the lowly White Sox beginning Tuesday before ending the regular season with the Orioles, whom they just took three of four against in Baltimore.
“Obviously, we can only control what we can control, but I’m confident in this team,” Cam Schlittler said. “We got a chance to put ourselves in a really good spot, whether that’s a bye or not. I know the team’s going to be locked in the next six games.”
The Yankees, whose 28-14 record since Aug. 6 is the best in MLB during that span, have the easiest schedule on paper among all the contending AL teams. The Red Sox play the Blue Jays and Tigers. The Guardians play the Tigers and Rangers. The Tigers play the Guardians and Red Sox. The Astros play the Athletics and Angels. The Mariners play the Rockies and Dodgers.
The matchups between the Guardians, Tigers and Red Sox mean that only two of those teams can finish with 89 wins, and one of them will be the AL Central winner, which is why the Yankees winning their 89th game on Tuesday would clinch their playoff spot.
As for seeding in the wild-card standings, the Yankees do not have the tiebreaker against the Red Sox, Guardians or Tigers, have it against the Mariners and are up in the air against the Astros — they went 3-3 against each other during the regular season, so the next tiebreaker is in-division record (the Yankees are currently 24-25 while the Astros are 22-24).
If the Yankees cannot catch up to the Blue Jays, the next priority would be securing the top wild-card spot, which would allow them to play the first-round series at home. The magic number to do that is four.
Aside from scoreboard watching and winning their own games, the Yankees still have questions to answer this week.
Will their third starter in a playoff series be Schlittler or Luis Gil? Is Anthony Volpe’s solid play on both sides of the ball since he got the cortisone injection for real, and is it enough for him to fend off José Caballero in the postseason? Is the recent momentum from the bullpen legitimate or just taking advantage of bad teams (which may not actually get answered this week considering the opponents)?
“Every day, it feels like there’s so much on the line,” Boone said. “But once it’s over with, you got to move on too. It’s great this way heading into an off day. It’s always good racking up a couple wins into an off day and guys can unplug a little bit, recharge a little bit and understand we got a real important one the next day.”
