It Aint over until it's over . . .

For all those who are ready to jump into the Charles or have completely focused their concentration on the beginnings of the NFL season and the fact that the B's are skating with purpose again, it's not over yet.

Let's break it down.

The Red Sox remaining schedule:

Three games vs. Baltimore at Fenway (including a doubleheader today)
Four games vs. New York at Yankee Stadium
Three games vs. Baltimore on the road (which isn't really on the road because there are so many sox fans there)

The Yankees remaining schedule:

One game vs. Minnesota @ home
Four games vs. Tampa Bay @ home (including a doubleheader on Wednesday)
Three games vs. Tampa Bay in Tampa

The Ray remaining schedule:

Four games vs. New York in @ Yankee Stadium (including a doubleheader tomorrow)
Three games vs. Toronto at home
Three games vs. New York

There are way too many scenarios to try and map out the remaining 10 games and how everything is going to work out, but say by some crazy miracle let's just take the next four games and look at one scenario.

Red Sox sweep Baltimore (4 wins and a day off on Thursday):

The sox are the only team that have a scheduled day off after today until the end of the season and the sox have a double header vs. baltimore as opposed the yankees and the rays who are have a double header scheduled for Wednesday

Yankees lose to Minnesota and then get swept by Tampa.


So then you are at Friday September 23 with six games left to go for each team.

Possible Standings would be:


American League East GB

Yankees - 91-65           -----
Red Sox - 91-65           -----
Tampa Bay - 89 - 67     2.5

Then each team would have the following schedule remaining:

Red Sox:

Three games @ New York against the Yankees
Three games @ Baltimore against the Orioles

Yankees:

Three games @ home vs. Boston
Three games in Tampa against the Rays

Tampa Bay:

Three games @ home vs. Toronto
Three games @ home vs. New York

If the Sox were to sweep the Yankees and Tampa swept Yankees, the standings would look like this:

American League East GB

Red Sox - 94-65            -----
Yankees - 91-65            1.5
Tampa Bay - 92 - 67      2.0


Now obviously, that is a crazy scenario and asking a team that is the Red Sox to go and win seven straight games after losing nine out their last 11 is pretty ridiculous.

But the sox would only need one out of the next three games to wrap up the division and the yankees would be playing a best-of-three series that would determine the wild card winner.

This is why baseball is so much better than the other three professional sports, because of the limited number of teams that make it to the playoffs each year.

I really hope MLB doesn't expand and add another wild card team.

- That's it for now