You Have to Give the Yankees credit

I may not have been saying it before the season. But, most of the so-called experts felt that the Yankees would be running away with the division this season. People who thought Judge wasn’t a fluke and who thought Stanton could perform under pressure assumed that those two would lead an unbeatable line-up to an AL East title.

But, the Yankees saw through that. Not only did they sense that their team wasn’t that good, but they knew the Red Sox were better than they were. They clearly predicted that the Sox, and not the Yanks, would run away with the division, and would have the opportunity to clinch when the two teams started their early September series. Why else would they schedule a non-holiday Tuesday day game? Clearly they wanted to make sure that as few people as possible would actually see the Red Sox clinch yet another title in Yankee Stadium. It was a masterstroke of genius.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. I thought the Red Sox were going to be throwing the game yesterday. With the off day today, and DeGrom starting for the Mets, and Sale only going a few innings before handing it to a collection of bullpen pitchers, I was sure this was another game where Cora would make fantasy owners mad. I expected a game where only September call-ups would play, and all the regulars would get two days off. But, only JD got the day off. It almost bit Cora when Mookie had to leave the game, but it looks like he’ll hopefully be OK. So once again, in a game where the Sox probably didn’t “plan” on winning, they came back in the end to bring home the victory.

So that brings us to New York. If the Sox win one if these three games, the division is theirs. If they don't, the celebration will have to wait. At this point, it's just a matter of when. When the celebration can happen. When you can rest the whole team. When you can coast and only worry about setting up the rotation for a healthy postseason run.

It's also when we fans can start having real conversations about rosters and make up of the team headed into October. It's a fun time.

It's almost here.