Yankees Wrap up Homestand with Loss to Tigers

The American League East is quickly slipping away from the New York Yankees. Never was that more apparent than on their recent homestand where the Yankees lost a series to the Chicago White Sox and split a series against the Detroit Tigers. Those are two of the worst teams in baseball. They are definitely teams that the Yankees should be expected to beat if they have any hope of catching the Boston Red Sox for the division lead. That does not look like it is going to happen now.

The Yankees lost two of the three games against the White Sox in what was a major disappointment. They then proceeded to drop the first game of the Detroit series. They rallied to win the next two. However, Lance Lynn was shelled for six earned runs in 3.2 innings to take the loss in the final game of the series on Sunday. He has had four bad starts in a row after pitching well when he was traded to the Yankees from the Minnesota Twins. The 11-7 loss put the Yankees 7.5 games behind the Red Sox. Winning the division now would be a very tall order.

The Yankees will start a huge series on Monday in Oakland against the Athletics. The series is very important because right now Oakland is only 4.5 games behind the Yankees for the wild card. It is assumed that the Yankees and Oakland will be the two American League wild card teams. The team that finished with the better record will get to have the one-game wild card playoff in their home ballpark. Oakland definitely wants to get this. However, Oakland also has a very real chance of winning their division. The Houston Astros currently have a slim lead of only two games on Oakland. Therefore, Oakland is thinking more about avoiding the wild card playoff game altogether. The stakes will be very high when the Yankees and Athletics square off against each other.

The Yankees will look back at the past few weeks with regret if they do not have a good showing in the postseason. They have failed to play their best baseball against bad teams when they desperately needed to pile up wins. It is true that even the best teams will not beat the worst teams every time they play against each other. However, a 3-4 homestand against Chicago and Detroit is nothing short of a disaster.