On a night when Mariano Rivera created a lot of teary eyes across baseball, the three American League wild-card contenders didn't blink. Well, the Indians almost did, but we'll get to that in a moment.
In the Bronx, the Tampa Bay Rays were eager participants in saluting Rivera's final major league appearance in Yankee Stadium but otherwise took care of business, shutting down the Yankees, 4-0, behind Alex Cobb's strong seven innings to protect their one-game lead in the race for the two A.L. wild-card spots.
Over the course of three days, the Rays swept the Yankees, knocked them out of postseason contention, got any number of people in New York to note that their payroll is a whole lot less than the Yankees' and then headed off for a late-night flight to Toronto, where they will finish the season with a three-game weekend series.
The Rays are now on a seven-game winning streak, but so are the Cleveland Indians, who remain one game behind the Rays and once again took advantage of an inferior opponent. This time, they beat the Twins in Minnesota by a 6-5 score and survived a scary bottom of the ninth in which the Twins scored four times and put the tying and winning runs on base with two outs.
Meanwhile, in Arlington, Tex., Jurickson Profar hit a leadoff, game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth to give the Rangers a 6-5 victory over the Los Angeles Angels. It was the Rangers' fourth victory in a row, not as good as Cleveland and Tamps Bay's streak but not bad for a club that spent most of September stumbling around.
So with three games to go for all three contenders, it's Tampa in front, followed by Cleveland, followed by Texas, which trails the Indians by one game and the Rays by two.
The tightness of the race raises the obvious prospect that one or more wild-card tiebreaker games might have to be played at the start of next week before the wild-card playoff game can be played.
Meanwhile, here is a team-by-team breakdown of the three teams still in the race.
TAMPA BAY, 90-69 The Rays and the Blue Jays are the only major league teams that still play their home games on artificial turf. So it should be a level playing field in Toronto this weekend.
CLEVELAND, 89-70 The Indians make it a point never to lose to a team under .500. Four-game sweep of the White Sox, four-game sweep of Houston, another two-game sweep of the White Sox. And now, a Game 1 victory over the Twins with three more contests to come. As long as the Indians keep winning these games, they're in the postseason.
TEXAS, 88-71 The Rangers need either the Rays or the Indians to run into some trouble this weekend. Otherwise, they will run out of games, and time, without ever catching up. They are also playing the Angels, a tougher opponent than either the Blue Jays or the Twins. But stay tuned.
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