New York Yankees. Boston Red Sox. Toronto Blue Jays. Two of these teams will probably go to the 2021 MLB playoffs as the American League wild cards. The other will go home.
So which will it be? As the Yankees and Red Sox battle this weekend at Fenway Park (Sunday Night Baseball, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN), ESPN baseball experts David Schoenfield and Bradford Doolittle debate.
Schoenfield: Well, Brad, your favorite rivalry has one final showdown for 2021 this weekend at Fenway Park, the greatest baseball place in all the land -- unless, of course, the Yankees and Red Sox meet again in the AL wild-card game. The Red Sox enter the weekend with a little cushion over the Yankees and Blue Jays, so FanGraphs pegs their wild-card odds at 96.9%, with the Blue Jays at 55.9% and the Yankees at 41.2%. So basically a coin flip between the Yanks and Jays. I feel like that might be a little generous to the Yankees. Since that 13-game winning streak in August they're 10-15, including losing four straight at home to the Blue Jays earlier this month. Sure, they just swept the Rangers and took two of three from the Orioles, but they finish with this series at Fenway, three at Toronto and then three at home against the Rays. The Blue Jays are at Minnesota and then finish at home against the Yankees and Orioles. I have the Red Sox hosting the Blue Jays in the wild-card game.
Doolittle: Hello, Dave. Shall we continue the game? OK, I should explain. My intent here was to register my protest over the attention given to the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry by conducting this entire conversation by cutting and pasting from the screenplay of "2001: A Space Odyssey." So I read the entire screenplay. It's pretty good. Not much relevant to the AL East race in there. Go figure.
We are focusing on the East today, so I'll just briefly acknowledge that the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics are still part of this picture. Seattle has a narrow advantage among those two and a more favorable finishing schedule. The Mariners are only one back in the loss column to the Blue Jays, two back of the Yankees and four back of the Red Sox. If Seattle stays hot and the East teams kind of beat up on each other, maybe the M's sneak in. For the sake of today's focus, we'll assume both wild cards come out of the East.
Given all that, I'm going with a Yankees at Red Sox wild-card game as the most likely outcome. It all comes down to my belief that New York just has the most talented roster among the trio, and it's close enough that that edge can still win out. The momentum is heavily in favor of Toronto and Boston, to be sure, and as you point out, the Bombers get to play six straight against the teams they are battling for the same two slots, but they have to do so on the road.
Here is my hot take on this: Playing away from Yankee Stadium in these crucial games will work in New York's favor. As for Boston, they have the best record and have been hot of late. And still ... crafting a logical and defensible argument for the Blue Jays is not at all hard to do.
Schoenfield: Hey, you're talking to the biggest Mariners fan in the state of Connecticut. I had a Bruce Bochte T-shirt when I was a kid! I know where they stand and with a four-game sweep of the A's they just got even closer. They need that miracle bullpen to keep performing, Jarred Kelenic to stay relatively hot (.257/.333/.600 in September) and obviously need some help -- a Red Sox sweep of the Yankees would be in their best interests.
But, yes, it is almost certainly a 3-for-2 race. Part of me dislikes the wild card for this reason -- we end up discussing the teams in the wild-card races more than the better teams ahead of them, especially since none of the division races in the AL are close. At least the three AL East teams are interesting for various reasons. The Blue Jays have that tremendously fun lineup and a potential Cy Young winner in Robbie Ray. The Red Sox weathered the big COVID-19 outbreak on the team and now have everybody back and, oh by the way, have scored just two fewer runs than the Blue Jays. The Yankees had the pressure of huge expectations, made those midseason moves that seemed to fix everything -- and then slumped again.
Friday's matchup is a good one: Gerrit Cole versus Nathan Eovaldi. Those two actually rank 1-2 in WAR among AL pitchers, according to FanGraphs -- and Eovaldi is No. 1 (not that anybody is talking him up as a Cy Young candidate). Cole has been scuffling of late: Cleveland knocked him around for 10 hits and seven runs in his last start; he needed 108 pitches to get through five innings against the Orioles before that; three starts ago, he lasted just 3.2 innings against the Blue Jays. He's gone more than six innings just once in his past 10 starts (with a positive COVID test in the middle that knocked him out for two weeks). Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on the schedule, but I can't help but notice this: The Yankees are 22-10 against the AL Central, 22-12 against the AL West, 12-8 in interleague ... and 30-37 against the AL East. I think HAL 9000 would have to agree with me: Red Sox and Blue Jays. Chris Sale versus Ray would be a fun wild-card matchup.
Doolittle: Ah, a perfect spot for one more cut-and-paste from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke: I'm not questioning your word, Dave, but it's just not possible. I'm not capable of being wrong. ... That's a joke, folks. I feel I ought to make that obvious or I run the risk of being crowd-bullied by Giants fans.
Cole has been all over the place for the last month. It's not just the bottom-line results. When you look at his expected stats, the quality of his pitches has been wildly inconsistent from outing to outing. There is no way the Yankees survive this race if Cole doesn't give them strong outings the rest of the way. First, there is Friday's game against Boston. Then his next start would likely be Sept. 29 at Toronto. Must-win games for New York. And then if Cole is going well at that point, starting him on the last day of the season against the Rays on three days' rest would be an option for Aaron Boone, if it's another must-win game.
Recent inconsistency aside, I just have to think there are bigger worries for the Yankees than relying on Cole to step up when he's needed most. But what about Boston? Seems to me like the Red Sox have been winning with offense, which is fine. But given Boston's recent pitching performance, this might be the right time for the Yankees' bats to feast. Going back over the last month, the Red Sox's ERA (4.04 since Aug. 23) is OK, but that kind of masks the problem, as they've given up a ton of unearned runs.
You can also flip this and say the same things about the Red Sox hitters facing the Yankee pitchers, only Boston's hitters are already hot. So we're probably looking at some classic 4 1/2 hour Yankees-Red Sox games that come down to high-leverage relief.
Schoenfield: Yeah, hard to disagree there. In fact, as much as we've talked all season about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Marcus Semien and Xander Bogaerts and Aaron Judge and Cole and Ray, this race may come down to the inconsistent bullpens on the three teams. The Toronto bullpen has been the worst of the three over the course of the season and the 4.82 ERA in September is hardly anything special. The bright spot has been closer Jordan Romano, who is on a streak of seven straight scoreless/hitless appearances and 18 scoreless outings in his past 20 appearances (the Blue Jays are 19-1 in those games). So they have to at least feel good with a lead in the ninth.
For the Yankees, Aroldis Chapman has been better the past couple of weeks and pitching with his old swagger again, but he's faced one good offensive team this month and that was the Blue Jays and he allowed a home run, two walks, a wild pitch and Boone had to yank him. I don't trust him and the Yankees are otherwise relying on the likes of Chad Green (14 HRs in 78 IP), Wandy Peralta and the untested Clay Holmes (who has been great with 27 K's against one walk) and Joely Rodriguez in key moments.
For the Red Sox, they've won seven in a row, but needed a save in just one of those wins (Garrett Richards). Five different relievers have a save this month. Matt Barnes is not one of those. After an All-Star first half, he lost his closer job in August, missed three weeks with COVID and has made just two appearances since coming back. Garrett Whitlock had been terrific, but he's out on the IL with a pectoral strain. So, bottom line: All three bullpens are unpredictable right now.
Doolittle: Right. Boone and Charlie Montoyo at least know who they'll dial up for the ninth inning, while Alex Cora can't currently say the same thing. The Jays recently got Julian Merryweather back, which is a boost in theory, but he has yet to strike out a batter since his return. So all three of the skippers will be under the spotlight to pull the right strings when it comes to bullpen management.
So after all that, we both have the Red Sox hosting the AL Wild-card game, but you have the Blue Jays flying to Boston while I have the Yankees playing a return visit in a winner-take-all contest that might stir some reminiscences of the 1978 tiebreaker at Fenway Park. (The Bucky Dent game.)
We'll see how it plays out, but I'll leave you with these words of classic science fiction that are not my own: I'm sorry you feel the way you do, Dave. If you'd like to check my service record, you'll see it's completely without error.