The Yankees have clinched the AL East title and ironically helped the Boston Red Sox at the same time. The double header sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays sealed the division title for the Bronx Bombers. This seemed improbable at the beginning of the year as Boston picked up two of the best three guys available in the off-season, when they traded for Adrian Gonzalez and signed free agent Carl Crawford to go with their strong pitching staff.
The Yankees continued with a high payroll and a pretty good team coming back, so all the publicity for the Red Sox had to upset them. No matter what the case was, the Yankees played consistently good baseball this season and won the division rather easily.
The Yankees have won seven of their last ten games and in this time they have also seen Mariano Rivera tie the saves record formally held by Trevor Hoffman and then pass it. Rivera, who is a first ballot Hall of Famer and sure to go down as the greatest closer ever, has 44 saves this year as that cutter of his seems to be better than ever.
The Yankees have a 95-60 record right now and are poised to go for another World Series title. Manager Joe Girardi has worked wonders with this team. Curtis Granderson has played like an MVP and Robinson Cano is a perennial All-Star, but ARod was lost for a significant amount of time and a lot of the year was spent with very suspect pitching from guys like Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. Tonight, the Yankees even got a big hit from Jorge Posada.
Also, the Captain, Derek Jeter has put up his usual numbers with his batting average hovering around the .300 mark and he got his 3000 th hit this year. The Yankees are playing well down the stretch and did not look to back in the playoffs at all. They went out and took it like great teams do.
Congrats to the Yankees they are rarely the underdog but this time they were and came through with a great season.