BALTIMORE — The door is ajar.
Not, “Come on in, the party’s just getting started!” Not even, “Sure, what the heck, we’ve still got some time.” More like, “We’re throwing everyone out in a half-hour.”
Nevertheless, ajar, for these Yankees, constitutes progress.
The Red Sox’s long-awaited speed bump hit this week, just as the Yankees were taking no pity on baseball’s worst team, the Orioles. When the Rays completed a three-game sweep of baseball’s best team Sunday at Tropicana Field, the Bosox going down by a 9-1 score, the Yankees (82-47) closed within 6 ¹/₂ games — five in the loss column — of their historic rivals, who are 90-42, in the American League East, entering their series finale with the Orioles on Sunday night.
The Yankees, not surprisingly, pleaded apathy as they prepared for their last Camden Yards game of 2018.
“Haven’t looked,” a smiling David Robertson said. “Couldn’t care less.”
“Honestly, I don’t look at the standings until we get to September,” Dellin Betances said. “I know we’re a couple of days away. From playing with [Derek] Jeter, he always told me he never pays attention until early, middle September. It’s something that I kind of got from the best.”
“Today, today, today,” Aaron Boone said, flashing his own smile. “Honestly, that’s how I treat it. When the Red Sox lose, it’s nice. When they win, it’s kind of, ‘Ho hum. It’s what they’ve done all year.’ But I don’t really get caught up in it, or it doesn’t really affect me emotionally one way or the other. What I see, this is us taking care of our business. If we do that, we’ll hopefully put ourselves in a good spot come the end.”
As of Sunday morning, the website Fangraphs gave the Red Sox an 88.7 percent chance and the Yankees an 11.3 percent chance of capturing the AL East. That swayed from Red Sox 91.3 percent, Yankees 8.7 percent Saturday morning as a result of the Yankees’ doubleheader sweep of the O’s and Boston’s loss to the Rays on Saturday.
Historically, it simply is not easy to overcome this sizable a deficit with so few games left. Last year, with 130 games under their belts, the Yankees (70-60) trailed the Red Sox (74-57) by 3 ¹/₂ games, three in the loss column. The Yankees stepped on the gas the rest of the way, going 21-11 — and they finished two games behind the Sawx, who closed out with a 19-12 mark.
If the Yankees went an impressive 22-11 in their last 33 games, the Red Sox, who are on pace to finish 110-52, would have to tumble to a 13-17 record in order to give the Yankees the division outright.
The last time a team overcame a loss-column deficit of five or more games to win a division this late in the season — when the Yankees had played 130 games — occurred in 2010, when the Giants, 72-59 on Aug. 29 of that season, climbed over the Padres (76-53) to capture the National League West.
However, I’ll contend that a certain hope exists when you gain control of your destiny, and that’s what the Yankees did Saturday.
“We’ve got six games against them,” Betances said. “That’s all I know.”
Which means that trailing by six or fewer games in the loss column puts them in charge, no matter how likely a sweep of the Red Sox might be. The Yankees hadn’t occupied such a space since Aug. 3, when they dropped the second of four straight to Boston at Fenway Park and fell six games back in the loss column (7 ¹/₂ overall).
“If we play well, the way we’re capable of as we get guys back, we’re capable of being a special club,” Boone said.
The wider they open this door, the more likely they can avoid the terrifying one-and-done wild-card game and honor that special potential.
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