The Boston Red Sox can breathe a momentary sigh of relief. They’re finally headed back to the postseason.
With a 4-3 walk-off win over the Detroit Tigers on Friday night, the Red Sox (88-72) ensured they’d take part in the wild-card round of the postseason, which begins on Tuesday. Who they’ll face, though, is still way up in the air.
After seeing Friday’s results, we today know there are three possible first-round playoff opponents for Boston. Let’s break them all down and assess which ones are most likely to come to fruition.
There are three possibilities for the Red Sox. They could face the New York Yankees or Toronto Blue Jays, who are tied for the lead in the American League East entering play on Saturday. Or they could face the Cleveland Guardians, who are tied with the Tigers atop the AL Central.
By far the most likely scenario at this point is the Red Sox becoming the second wild-card team. To drop to the No. 3 spot, they would have to lose both games this weekend to the Tigers, who are still trying to clinch,
That means for the Red Sox’s purposes, it doesn’t really matter if Detroit is forced to use ace Tarik Skubal to secure its playoff spot on Sunday, because that would only happen in the event of a loss on Saturday, which means the Red Sox would have ensured they play the AL East loser in round one.
The Tigers winning the division would mean the Guardians have to lose at least one game this weekend, which would guarantee Boston finishes ahead of Cleveland. So the Tigers are the one team still fighting for its seeding who the Red Sox cannot see in round one.
Meanwhile, Toronto owns the tiebreaker over New York, so the Yankees would have to win at least one more game this weekend to skip the wild-card round and avoid a potential showdown with the arch-rival Red Sox.
It’s all convoluted, but the long and short is this: the most probable opponent for the Red Sox right today is the Yankees, followed by the Blue Jays, followed by the Guardians. They’ll go on the road for that best-of-three showdown and send ace Garrett Crochet to the mound on Tuesday night.
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