By NOAH TRISTER AP Baseball Writer
Clinching season has begun, with the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers becoming the first teams to wrap up spots in the postseason.
Here’s a quick rundown of baseball’s remaining unresolved races:
In the American League
The New York Yankees and Boston are almost certain to join Tampa Bay in the playoffs out of the AL East. The Rays have a comfortable four-game lead in the division over the Yankees, and they’re likely to have the tiebreaker over New York, but that race isn’t completely over since the two teams face each other in a four-game series in the final week of the regular season.
The Red Sox can plan on being the second wild card.
That leaves three spots up for grabs: the AL Central title, the AL West title and the third wild card. The Chicago White Sox lead Cleveland by a half-game for the AL Central, with the Guardians holding a one-game lead over Toronto for the final wild card. Houston leads Texas by one game for the AL West, and the Rangers are also two behind Cleveland for the last wild card. Everyone else is at least four behind Cleveland.
Head to head: White Sox at Cleveland (Sept. 14-16), Toronto at Texas (Sept. 18-20).
Other key tiebreakers that have been determined: White Sox over Blue Jays and Rangers; Astros over White Sox, Guardians and Rangers; Blue Jays over Guardians; Rangers over Blue Jays and Guardians.
There’s also a tight race brewing between the AL Central and AL West leaders for the second of the AL’s two first-round byes. Right now Chicago leads Houston by 1 1/2 games for that.
In the National League
The Brewers, Atlanta and the Los Angeles Dodgers all have substantial leads in their divisions. Milwaukee (93-57) seems pretty safe for a first-round bye. Los Angeles (90-59) leads Atlanta (88-62) in the race for the other one.
The wild-card race is basically four teams fighting for three spots — the Chicago Cubs (83-67), Philadelphia (83-67), San Diego (81-68) and Arizona (79-71). San Diego hosts Arizona in the final three games of the season Sept. 25-27.
Tiebreakers: Braves over Dodgers; Cubs over Phillies, Padres and Diamondbacks; Phillies over Padres.
Trivia time
Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has a chance to finish the season in double digits in the FanGraphs version of wins above replacement. That’s been done a few times in recent years by the likes of Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., Mookie Betts and Mike Trout, but no National Leaguer has accomplished the feat since Barry Bonds had 11.9 fWAR in 2004.
Who was the last NL player to do it besides Bonds?
Performance of the week
Philadelphia’s Jesús Luzardo struck out 12 in a two-hit shutout of Atlanta on Monday. The Phillies won 1-0 thanks to Kyle Schwarber’s eighth-inning homer, salvaging a split of a four-game series with the Braves in a game that took 1 hour, 51 minutes.
But Philadelphia probably needed more to stay in the NL East race. Atlanta is now five games up.
Comeback of the week
Down 6-1, San Francisco stormed back with six runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to beat St. Louis 7-6 on Wednesday. All those runs came with two outs.
Bryce Eldridge hit a bases-loaded single to bring home two runs. Then Jonah Cox hit an RBI single and Jung Hoo Lee tied it with a two-run double. Shay Whitcomb’s double made it 7-6. After the second out, the Giants had a win probability of 1.1% according to Baseball Savant.
Team of the week
San Diego went 6-0 to jump ahead of Arizona in the playoff race. The Padres have won seven in row overall, four of which were by one run and only one of which was by more than two. Mason Miller has four saves during the streak.
Trivia answer
In 1998, Kevin Brown finished with 10.0 fWAR, going 18-7 with a 2.38 ERA in 257 innings for San Diego. That pitching performance was actually worth just 9.6 fWAR, but Brown also got a small amount of credit for his batting.
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