With nearly two months still on the calendar, the Yankees’ AL East chase is already being written off by one WFAN voice.
After Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Cardinals, New York sits 4 1/2 games behind the Rays in the division, with a five-game gap in the loss column. Because Tampa Bay also owns the season-series edge right now, that deficit effectively becomes six in the loss column for the Yankees.
On Thursday morning, WFAN’s Evan Roberts made his stance plain.
“It doesn’t mean [the] season’s over, it just means this division isn’t happening,” Roberts declared on air Thursday morning.
The Yankees are still in decent shape in the AL Wild Card race, where they currently lead the field, but the Red Sox are only one game back. The bigger problem, in Roberts’ view, is the math at the top of the division and the lack of offensive punch to close the gap.
The clubs still have one more four-game series against each other, set for Sept. 22-24. Roberts pointed to that matchup as the hinge point for the standings.
“Unless they sweep the Tampa Bay Rays in their final four-game series against them, they’re going to lose the tiebreaker, which means they’re not 5 games back in the loss column, they’re 6 games back in the loss column” Roberts said. “While that’s not impossible, and I am not ruling that out, this offense does not score enough freakin’ runs for me to think they’re going to win enough baseball games over the final two months to overcome that deficit.”
Not everyone on the WFAN show agreed with that read. Co-host Shaun Morash pushed back, saying there’s still plenty of time for the Yankees to make a run and suggesting the Rays will hit a rough patch of their own.
“The schedule will balance itself out somewhat,” he said, adding. “I still think the Yankees’ best offensive baseball is ahead of them and I gotta think there’s two weeks of [bad] baseball coming for the Rays.”
New York did get some encouraging injury news on Wednesday, with updates on Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt are also expected back before the season is over. Those returns would let the Yankees move Will Warren and Ryan Weathers into the bullpen, giving that group a boost.
Even with that help on the way, Roberts isn’t buying the idea that the Yankees can reel in Tampa Bay.
“I just don’t think there’s enough time and I don’t believe that even with the additions that they made [at the deadline], I just don’t think that they’re going to score any runs,” he said.
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