MLB Playoffs: Examining the three team AL Wild Card race

The AL East division crown is just about decided, a three horse race for the AL Wild Card provides some major drama.

It’s hard to believe we’re only about three weeks away from the end of the baseball season.

While most divisions aren’t officially decided yet, it’s pretty clear who we’re looking at to claim division championships. When looking at the wild card race, it’s a totally different story.

The AL East was thought to be one of the toughest divisions coming into the 2021 season. Tampa Bay made it to the World Series last year, the Yankees are the Yankees, Toronto is young but solid, Boston could have gone either way and the Orioles were there too.

Fast forward to late September. Tampa is still a World Series threat, and they might be even better than last year. The Yankees have had their moments, but when they’re hot they’re unstoppable. Toronto has impressed with one of the most exciting teams in baseball. Boston has outperformed a lot of expectations, thanks in large part to a great start to the season. And the Orioles have even won a few games themselves.

As a result, we now have four teams fighting for three playoff spots. It’s not official yet, but it seems cut and dry that the Rays are going to walk away with the American League East crown. That means there are three teams going for the two AL Wild Card spots.

Oakland and Seattle lurk in the event that the East teams beat up on each other. At 3.5 and 4 games back respectively, there’s still time for the AL West teams to make up some ground.

It’s kind of surprising to see that the Mariners are still hanging around given that they’ve only even been over .500 three times since 2010 and as recently as 2019 they finished with 94 losses and 34 games back in the division.

Seattle and Oakland face off seven more times in 2021 which means one of two things happens: one team knocks the other out or they finish pretty even and both end up out.