The wild card race in the American League is now much more interesting than it was one month ago. The Oakland Athletics played outstanding baseball in the month of August to catapult themselves back into relevance in the American League playoff picture. They now have a firm hold on the second wild card spot. They defeated the New York Yankees on Monday at the Oakland Coliseum. This was a huge win for Oakland because it allowed them to close the gap to only 3 1/2 games on the Yankees. Oakland is actually closer to the lead in the American League West than they are to the wild card. They are currently 2 1/2 games behind the Houston Astros.
C.C. Sabathia did not have a good start for the Yankees. He threw 40 pitches in the first inning when he allowed three Oakland runs to score. One of those runs was forced in by a walk. He eventually gave up four earned runs in 3.1 innings of work. Trevor Cahill pitched much better for the Athletics. He went five innings and gave up two runs. Oakland eventually won the game by a 6-3 score in front of over 40,000 fans. The Athletics were only averaging 17,000 fans so far this year. However, the combination of Oakland being in a playoff race and the Yankees being in town was enough to get a huge amount of people to come to the game. The fact that it was Labor Day certainly helped the attendance figure as well.
The Athletics are in a very good position right now in the standings. They are basically assured of getting into the playoffs as a wild card. However, winning the wild card and finishing behind the Yankees will mean that they will be playing a one-game playoff at Yankee Stadium. This is something they obviously want to avoid at all costs. However, they have two ways to get into the playoffs. They could also win their division. Both ways are still realistic at this point. Winning the division would mean that they would not need to play a sudden death game just to get to the division series.
The Yankees are saying publicly that they still have their sights set on a division title. However, any realistic shot of them winning the division faded away a month ago. The Boston Red Sox have built up a huge lead. They barely ever lose a game.
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