Tampa Bay just won the AL East, and the payroll gap between the Rays and the team they beat is somewhere north of absurd.
The Rays, at 90-59, have clinched the division. The Yankees, at 87-63, have locked up a wild card spot. Boston sits behind both and is in strong position for a wild card berth of its own, which means the AL East is likely sending three teams to October again.
New York Secured Its Spot the Right Way
The Yankees clinched at least one wild card on Monday, and Aaron Judge marked the occasion by hitting his first home run since coming off the injured list in an 8-3 win over the Twins.
That is the development that actually matters for New York. A healthy, productive Judge in October changes the ceiling of this roster more than any seeding scenario. A Judge who is still shaking off rust in the wild card round is how the Yankees end up watching the ALDS from home.
The two clubs still have a four-game series left this month, which would have been the marquee event of the final stretch if the division were still live. It is not. Tampa Bay put it away.
Why the Rays Deserve More Credit Than They Get
Every year the Rays lose somebody good, every year the projections put them fourth, and every year they are still there in September. This is the most reliable trick in baseball and it still gets treated like an accident.
Tampa Bay wins with pitching depth, defensive flexibility, and a willingness to use players in ways that would cause a revolt in a bigger market. They also win because their front office is not sentimental about anyone, which is a competitive advantage that costs nothing.
Beating out a Yankees team that spends multiples of what they spend, in a division that also contains Boston and Baltimore, should end the annual conversation about whether the Rays are for real.
The Rest of the AL
The White Sox are trying to hold off Cleveland in the Central, which is a sentence nobody expected to write two years ago. Houston leads Texas by one game in the West and holds the tiebreaker, which makes the final two weeks in the AL West a genuine coin flip.
The last wild card spot is the messiest race in baseball. Cleveland currently holds it while barely staying above .500, with Toronto, Texas and Baltimore all lurking. Pete Alonso’s Orioles are very much alive there.
Bottom Line
Tampa Bay earned the top seed conversation. New York got in and got Judge back swinging. The teams below them are going to spend the next 14 days in a knife fight.
October is going to run through the AL East again. It usually does.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.