The Tampa Bay Rays may not spend like the rest of the teams in the American League East Division.
That clearly hasn’t stopped them from being the class of the AL East, and in this season in particular, the class of the entire American League.
The Rays are on the verge of a division title, and they’ll get the chance to make it happen at Yankee Stadium as long as they can take care of business.
The schedule certainly worked out for some intrigue, as the New York Yankees host the Rays for a four-game series beginning on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s action is even more intense: It’s a doubleheader that includes a make-up game from earlier in the season.
The Yankees are going to have a lot of work to do to hold off the Rays from the division crown at this point.
Rays Clinching Scenarios
It’s really incredibly simple for Tampa Bay:
Any one win over the Yankees in the four-game series clinches the division.
Tampa Bay holds a six-game lead on New York with seven games for both teams to play.
That means any win would turn the lead into more games than there are games left, which means the division would be clinched.
Tampa Bay enters with a 95-60 record. The Yankees are 89-66.
The Rays held what felt like a four-game lead pretty much the whole month, and then the Yankees lost a pair of games over the weekend in Arizona to make their chances of catching the Rays even slimmer.
Yankees Catching Rays: 1 Scenario
Because it’s a six-game Rays lead with seven to play, these teams would need to somehow have totally opposite final weeks of the regular season for the Yankees to catch up.
First, the Yankees would have to sweep the Rays in the four-game series this week, including the doubleheader on Tuesday.
Then, the Yankees would have to handle the Baltimore Orioles on the weekend.
The Rays close in Philadelphia against the Phillies, an unusual interleague matchup but also not easy games.
If the Yankees sweep the Rays, Tampa Bay’s lead would be down to 2.0 games with three to play.
If the Yanks then won all three against Baltimore and the Rays dropped all three against the Phillies, New York would win the division.
The Yankees could actually sweep the Rays, then hold just a two-game edge on the weekend — three wins to one, or two wins to none — because a sweep of the Rays this week would also give the Yankees the head-to-head tiebreaker for season record. It’s currently 6-3 Tampa Bay in the season series, but a New York sweep would make it 7-6 Yankees.
The odds that the Rays lose all or almost all their games this week aren’t high, but baseball is an odd game, and weird things happen.
Most likely, Tampa Bay will be celebrating an AL East title shortly, but the Yankees will keep pushing until there’s no hope left.
This Is How Rays Clinch AL East Title Over Yankees Today