Sports Columns

How Far will the Yankees go this Postseason?, 7/31/02

By Adam Solan

Not many people doubt that the Yankees are going to break into the post season once again, for the 7th time in a row. Instead, now it¹s a question of how far will they get. It seems as if Red Sox fans are now waking up and smelling the coffee, their team has drifted again and the curse lives on.

A more interesting and tighter race is going on over in the AL West between Anaheim and Seattle. Seattle is following their record breaking season with a pretty decent encore performance but lately Anaheim has been playing great ball and actually took Seattle out of first for the first time since the beginning of the season. This is bad news for Seattle fans as it looks as if the Wild Card team, which if the season were to end today would be Seattle, will play the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Red Sox are only 2 games out of the Wild Card so the race for the West would be even more intensified if the Sox can come back and wrap up the Wild Card before the end of the season. To make matters even more interesting, Anaheim and Seattle play each other the last 3 games of the season, while Boston takes on the worst team currently in the Majors, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. And lets not forget those Oakland A¹s with their amazing starting pitching squad. They are only 4 games back of Anaheim and Seattle and could make the race a lot more interesting at the end of the season. In the Central, Minnesota seems to have things pretty wrapped up with the White Sox 14 games behind them.

The current playoff picture matches up Seattle vs the Yankees and Anaheim vs Minnesota in the first round. Sorry Yankee haters, but realistically, who is going to stop the Yankees from getting into the fall classic if they beat Seattle? How can Seattle stop the Yankees after not being able to do so with 116 wins in the regular season last year?