​Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a fan survey across Major League Baseball. Throughout the year we pose questions to the most plugged-in Yankees supporters and fans from coast to coast. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
It’s been a challenging three-to-four weeks for Yankees fans. The team that once stood 46-28 with the best record in the American League has stumbled through a 4-14 stretch. That slide allowed the upstart Rays to edge them for first place in the AL East. Although the Yankees have won a couple of recent games, they still trail Tampa Bay by four games. The Rays also have one of the lighter remaining schedules, which isn’t helping, and the Yankees will need to sweep their lone remaining series against the Rays—a four-game set at the Bronx in late September that includes a doubleheader—to secure the head-to-head tiebreaker they lost last year to Toronto. The second half formally begins next Friday, but mathematically we’re already halfway through the 162-game slate, and FanGraphs currently projects the Rays with a 59 percent chance to win the division. The Yankees sit at 38 percent, with no other team above 1.5 percent.
Given the gloomy mood around the team this week, it isn’t surprising that, in our SB Nation Reacts results, only about a quarter of the responding Yankees fans believe they’ll win the AL East. A total of 18 percent even predict they’ll miss the playoffs entirely. The most common forecast places the Yankees exactly where they currently sit—holding the top AL Wild Card spot and hosting a first-round best-of-three against the second-best Wild Card. The team survived that format against the Red Sox last year, but it would put them behind the top-seeded Blue Jays, and that scenario could recur this year with Tampa Bay looming.
While the Yankees have played poorly recently and show some worrying red flags, I still think the rest of the American League is flawed enough that they should still reach the postseason. FanGraphs, for instance, assigns a 96.3 percent chance to a playoff appearance. Could that happen? Absolutely. The Wild Card race is a jumble right now, and if the Yankees concede more ground from their 5.5-game lead on the last Wild Card spot, things could get tense. Even at their most frustrating, it’s useful to remember that we view the Yankees under the closest possible microscope. We see all their flaws, but it’s worth recognizing that the other contenders—yes, even the Rays and Dodgers—have their own warts that their fans are fixated on. That’s especially true with all the teams in the AL Wild Card mix. The Mariners are in that conversation too, for better SEO.