As you no doubt already know from reading my March 6 post (Baseball Expands Its Playoff Format), there will be five teams (not four as in the past) making the playoffs from the American League this year. They will be the three division (East, Central & West) champs plus two wild cards. The wild cards will be the two non-division champs with the best record, and they will have a one-game series. Therefore, there is a BIG incentive to qualify for the playoffs as a division champ instead of as a wild card. Lose the wild card game and you are doneskie for the year.
The NY Yankees, with their $196 million payroll (highest, by far, in the Majors), might not win the AL East Division. In fact, they might not even make the playoffs! Right now they are tied with the Orioles (with a payroll of only $81 million) for the AL East lead. Each of those two teams currently has 59 losses. If, for the sake of discussion, the Orioles win the AL East, that means the Yankees would have to have a better record than all but one of the other non-division champs to qualify for post-season play. Let's look at the competition.
In the AL East, the Tampa Bay Rays have only 61 losses, so they are definitely in contention for the playoffs, maybe even the division championship. In the AL Central, the White Sox and the Tigers have 62 and 63 losses, respectively. One of them will make it in as the division champ; the other has a shot at a wild card. In the AL West, the Texas Rangers have an almost healthy four game lead for the division championship, but the surprising Oakland A's (just 59 losses) and the underachieving LA/Anaheim Angels (63 losses) are in the hunt.
Picture a scenario where the three division champs are the O's, the White Sox and the Rangers. The Yankees would then have to fend off the Rays, the Tigers, the A's and the Angels, assuming none of those teams goes in the tank between now and October. Two of those five teams would make the one-game playoff, while the other three start their off-season early.
Today, the Rays will try to finish a three game sweep against the Yankees, and starting tomorrow, the Yankees open up a four game series in Baltimore. That will be huge. Maybe the boys in pinstripes are starting to feel the heat. A question along those lines was put to Yankee star Derek Jeter last Saturday and again on Sunday. Both times he shrugged off any concern. "Yankees Say Sky Isn't Falling" read the Star Tribune's sports page headline. Despite the bravado, if the team fails to make the playoffs, the sky in their world will indeed have fallen.
By the way, you might wonder which of the thirty Major League Baseball teams has the lowest payroll. That would be the Oakland A's, a team which has an identical record to the Yankees. Oakland's $49 million payroll is, for all intents and purposes, equal to the combined individual salaries of just two of the Yankees' players on their twenty-five man roster, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira. Unless one is a native New Yorker, how can you possibly cheer for the Bronx Bombers?
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