Breaking Down the Yankees’ Remaining Schedule
On the morning of September 12th, the Yankees sat 10.5 games out of the division and 4.0 games out of the second wild card spot. They trail both the Orioles and Blue Jays in the AL East and the Blue Jays, Indians, Mariners, and Tigers for the second wild card spot. Also, the Athletics are only a game up on the Tigers for the first wild card spot. With only 18 games left in the season heading into play Friday afternoon, the Yankees need to go on a serious run to fulfill playoff aspirations. Here is a look at the remaining schedule:
9/12-9/14: @Orioles for 4 games (Lost series opener 2-1 in 11 innings)
9/15-9/17: @Rays for 3 games
9/18-9/21: Blue Jays for 4 games
9/22-9/25: Orioles for 4 games
9/26-9/28: @Red Sox for 3 games
All games are against AL East opponents. 8 are at home while 10 are on the road. The Orioles and Blue Jays are in contention. The Rays and Red Sox are not. Recent injuries to Carlos Beltran and Brett Gardner force the team to play out the string shorthanded and diminished. 12-6 or 13-5 is probably the minimum win-loss record they need to remain relevant. Even then, they would need all the teams ahead of them to play mediocre or badly. Those are just general observations. The actual projections are far more useful. Fangraphs gives them just a 2.8% chance of making the playoffs. Baseball Prospectus is slightly more bearish: 2.6% chance. Fangraphs explanation of its playoff odds: “Fangraphs Projection Mode- this mode uses a combination of Steamer and ZiPS projections and the FanGraphs Depth Charts to calculate the winning percentage of each remaining game in the major league season.” Baseball Prospectus uses PECOTA as its projection system.
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Despite the long odds there is still a chance. Mathematically they are still alive and have a fairly recent example of this type of comeback: the 2011 Cardinals. They were 4.5 games behind the Braves for the lone wild card spot in the National League on September 12th of that year. They only had to jump 1 team instead of 4 but ended up miraculously making the playoffs on the final day of the season (one of the most exciting days in baseball history) and, of course, proceeded to win the World Series. Weirder things have happened. It’s baseball.