Red Sox Standings Watch: AL East division race isn’t over yet
The Boston Red Sox hold a commanding lead in the AL East but history shows that we can’t necessarily count on a division title yet.
We knew this would be a pivotal series. Any meeting between the Boston Red Sox and their archrival seems important yet the stakes are raised when they are locked in a tight division race. The New York Yankees had an opportunity to come into Fenway and put a bigger dent in Boston’s lead than the indentations littering the left field wall. Instead, they found themselves buried by a four-game sweep that hands their foes a monstrous edge in the AL East.
The Red Sox now hold a 9.5 game lead over the Yankees. A canyon-sized advantage, yet not an insurmountable one. There’s still plenty of baseball left to play so we caution against placing that order for your 2018 division champion tee-shirts just yet.
Boston’s 79-34 record gives them a .699 winning percentage, which would be the highest in franchise history. They are on pace for 113 wins, a total topped by only three teams in major league history. The 1906 Chicago Cubs and 2001 Seattle Mariners share the record with 116 wins, while the 1998 New York Yankees won 114.
If this team is having a historically great season then why should we be concerned about this massive division lead crumbling away? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
The 2011 Red Sox were on their way to a dominant season that slipped away after an unprecedented collapse. Boston had a .624 winning percentage on August 3 of that season. Not quite where they are at today but it would have been the fifth-best winning percentage in franchise history if they had maintained it. They didn’t.
The division lead over the Yankees was a mere one game at this same point of the 2011 season. However, Boston was 11 games ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays. This was back in the days where each league only included one Wild Card team so there was less emphasis on winning the division. The goal was to simply make it to the postseason, which seemed all but assured at that point.
By the end of August, Boston increased their lead over the Yankees by half a game. The Rays put only a small dent in their deficit, still trailing by nine games.
We all know what happened next. A dysfunctional clubhouse fell apart during an epic September collapse. The Red Sox lost to the last-place Baltimore Orioles on the final day of the regular season when closer Jonathan Papelbon blew a ninth-inning save. Moments later, Evan Longoria blasted a walk-off home run against a disinterested Yankees bullpen. Tampa Bay finished that season on a five-game winning streak to leap over the Red Sox by one game in the Wild Card race.
Need more evidence? Fine, we’ll take a painful stroll down memory lane to the 1978 season.
The Red Sox led the Yankees by as many as 14 games in July of ’78. They led by 8.5 games on August 3 of that season, while holding a 6-game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers and 8-games over the Baltimore Orioles. In those days, the AL was split into two divisions with seven teams each and the Brewers had yet to move to the NL.
By the end of the month, New York had jumped into second place in the AL East but still trailed the Red Sox by 6.5 games.
That lead wouldn’t hold. We think we’ve buried the Yankees with a four-game sweep in August this year? Back in ’78, the Yankees swept the Red Sox over the final four games of the season. That dismal stain on Red Sox history would become known as the Boston Massacre.
That forced a one-game playoff game, which the Yankees won on a home run by Bucky Dent. Long before Red Sox fans resented the heroics of Aaron Boone, there was Bucky “Bleepin” Dent.
Boston won 99 games that year and still missed the playoffs. That’s not quite the pace this year’s team is on but the win total still stands as the fourth most in franchise history. It goes to show that you can have a historically great season that still isn’t enough to reach the postseason.
Making the playoffs is quite a bit easier than it was 40 years ago. There are fewer teams to compete against in the AL East. There are more teams in the league, which means more bottom-feeders to beat up on. There’s also the Wild Card, which didn’t exist in 1978 and only included one spot in 2011.
The Seattle Mariners, the top team in the AL currently sitting outside a playoff spot, trail the Red Sox by 14 games in the loss column. That’s a bigger lead than the Red Sox let slip away in ’79 or ’11 but not by much. While MLB.com gives the Red Sox a 100% chance of making the playoffs based on simulations of the remaining schedule, they haven’t mathematically clinched anything yet.
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The remaining schedule won’t be a cakewalk either. Boston still has seven games against the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians and three against a reigning World Series champion Houston Astros team leading the AL West. They have a pair of road games against the Philadelphia Phillies and three in Atlanta against the Braves – two teams vying for the NL East division.
Let’s not forget the six games remaining against the Yankees, the last three of which finish off the regular season. It would take only a brief stumble for the Yankees to conceivably climb back in reach of making that final series matter.
That’s 21 of the final 49 games against teams that are likely heading to the postseason. The Red Sox are currently 31-20 against teams at or above .500 this season. That’s the best record in the majors against winning teams yet far below their overall winning percentage.
Boston can maintain their impressive record against winning teams and still lose ground based on a more difficult schedule. Baseball Prospectus projects the Red Sox for a .504 opponent strength on their remaining schedule, which is about average. The Yankees have the second-easiest remaining schedule with a .465 opponent strength. If New York can chip away a few games based on their easier schedule then the six remaining head-to-head games with Boston could make up the remaining difference.
There’s still time for everything to go wrong. This team is too talented to completely fall apart, so long as the talent remains on the field. Injuries are the quickest way to unravel a great team. Boston is already dealing with several injuries in their infield, plus a disabled list stint for Chris Sale. The ace is expected back this week but the injury shows he’s not unbreakable.
Boston is 7-3 in extra-innings and 18-10 in one-run games. Both are excellent marks that put them among the league’s elite but that success isn’t necessarily sustainable in a small sample. A bloop base hit that falls in, a bad bounce on a ball that kicks away from a defender, a baserunning blunder. There are many unpredictable factors that can decide these tight games. If Boston’s good fortune makes a turn for the worst down the stretch it could potentially cost them a few games.
The Red Sox will almost certainly make it to the postseason. A collapse to fall behind the teams contending for the Wild Card spots would be unprecedented, especially when factoring in the addition of the second Wild Card spot. The division race is less of a certainty. Sweeping the Yankees gives the Red Sox a much larger margin for error but that doesn’t mean they can coast to the finish line. This is no time to get comfortable.
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Boston needs to keep their foot on the gas to keep the lead out of reach. They need to clinch the division and the top seed to earn home-field advantage before the Yankees come to town for that final series. Only then can they ease up to get their stars some extra rest and set their rotation for the postseason.