The AL East is where all the Action is

The Blue Jays have been playing better baseball than anyone else expected of them this season, but everything may be coming back down into place. The New York Yankees are on an absolute tear running a current 7 game winning streak and the Boston Red Sox have taken it to the Jays in the past two games of their three game set. This is not even mentioning the series loss to the Yankees that the team just went through last week as well. What has kept them at the top of the AL East so far has been the series against the lesser teams, including a four game series sweep of the Chicago White Sox after the Yankees series. However you look at though, the AL East is going to be a lot tighter or a race after this week with the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays within just a few games of each other heading into the third month of the season.

Last night the Red Sox absolutely took it to the Blue Jays with a convincing 8-3 win in which they scored 6 runs in the fifth inning against rookie start Brett Cecil. The night before the team was absolutely baffled by the knuckleball of starter Tim Wakefield and in the last game of the series it does not get any easier in Fenway Park. The Jays desperately need to pull out a win in order to keep ahead in the tight race while the Sox would love nothing sweeter than to take a quick series sweep from out from under them.

While these two powerful teams continue to battle it out, the New York Yankees have simply been taking everyone apart. They are quickly moving up in the standings and are finally healthy and establishing the game they are so used to playing. The thing about the way the Yankees are playing is that they are winning in a different way every game. Some nights they are dominating with their pitching, other nights it is their big bashers coming up at the right times. A few nights they are winning with late inning heroics and other nights they are simply dominating from the opening pitch on. It is starting to get scary for any AL team to watch the Yankees play as their high priced roster is starting to pay high priced dividends.

While it is tough to pick the best team in the AL as of right now, it definitely looks like two playoff teams will be coming out of the East. With the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays all battling it out week in and week out, not only is the divisional race going to come down to the wire, but so will the wild card race. There simply is no other team in any division in the American league that can compete with any of these 4 ball clubs over the course of the wild card race.