Aaron Choose is one step nearer to the American League’s single-season house run report, and the New York Yankees are one step nearer to the biggest blown division lead in baseball historical past. Choose swatted his 52nd house run Saturday night time, although the Yankees misplaced to the Tampa Bay Rays to trim their AL East result in 4 video games. It was as soon as 15 1/2 video games.
Right here is Choose’s career-high-tying 52nd house run. The AL single season report is after all 61 homers by Roger Maris in 1961. Choose wants 10 homers in New York’s last 29 video games to interrupt the report.
Nowadays Choose is a one-man military. The Yankees had three hits Saturday — a Giancarlo Stanton bloop single plus the homer and a line drive single by Choose — and Choose’s ninth inning homer snapped a 21-inning scoreless streak. They’ve scored three runs of their final 32 innings total. Choose is taking part in at an MVP tempo and he’s getting no assist in any respect.
As for the AL East lead, it has certainly been whittled down from 15 1/2 video games to solely 4 video games, the smallest it’s been since Might 11. At this level Tampa Bay, the second-place crew within the AL East, controls their future. They’ve 4 video games remaining with the Yankees. Win these, match New York in non-head-to-head video games, and Tampa wins the division.
The biggest blown division lead in baseball historical past is 13 video games by the 1951 Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees famously erased a 14-game deficit in 1978, although they had been in fourth place on the time. The Boston Purple Sox by no means led the division by greater than 10 video games that season.
The Yankees peaked at 61-23 (.726) on July 8. They’re 18-31 (.367) since then, they usually went 10-18 (.357) in August. It was New York’s worst month since going 9-19 (.321) in Sept. 1991.
Saturday’s video games dropped the Yankees to 79-54 and improved the Rays to 74-57 on the season. The Yankees are eight video games up on a postseason spot generally. The Rays sit within the prime wild-card spot.
