With the Red Sox completely out of the playoff picture, the month of September will be a pretty boring month for baseball in the New York area. The only thing we’ll pretty much have to look out for is the race for the best record in the American League, which will probably end up going to the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers may look to rest some of their younger pitchers, and may lose some ground, but a Yankee team without Mike Mussina won’t be able to make substantial gains on the Tigers. Combined with Torre probably resting Mo, and possibly Wang and Johnson, I can’t see them making up 3.5 games to Detroit. You never know though, the Yankees do have 4 games left with the Red Sox, so that should pretty much be four automatic wins.

The Mets are cruising along nicely in the NL, and will probably cruise straight to the World Series, barring some sort of matchup against the Los Angeles Dodgers, in which there’s a slight chance of the Mets losing. It’s really embarassing for the National League that the Mets are dominating the rest of the teams with such ease. I’m not knocking the Mets, as they are a tremendous team, but the Mets have missed their two aces Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez for substantial amounts of time this season, and they’ve still been able to crush the rest of the league. In a short series, the Dodgers would have the best chance of beating the Mets, but other than them, I don’t think any other team will be able to compete with the Amazins.

With Boston putting up the white-flag, the Yankees should be able to toy with their bullpen and bring up some youngsters to eat some innings in September. This month will be critical for A-Rod to get back on track as he’ll be facing below-average pitching, in an overall low-pressure environment for the month. If he can get back on track during this month, which I think he will, perhaps he can carry it over into the postseason. Speaking of slow, Derek Jeter is slowly gaining ground on Joe Mauer, and it won’t be before long that he has the AL batting crown, as well as the American League MVP.

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