NEW YORK — After 161 games played over six months failed to separate the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays at the top of the American League East, the division championship will be decided on the final day of Major League Baseball’s 2025 regular season.
“Kind of crazy,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Saturday. “That is the beauty of our sport. And for those of us and you guys and fans that live and die with their teams all summer long, it should make for an exciting day.”
New York and Toronto are both 93-68 and assured of postseason berths. The Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker for the division title and a higher playoff seed because they won the 13-game season series against the Yankees 8-5.
Both teams are hosting regular-season finales against division foes that have already been eliminated from contention for playoff berths.
Yankees right-hander Luis Gil (4-1, 3.29 ERA), the 2024 AL rookie of the year, will pitch Sunday afternoon in the Bronx, where the last-place Baltimore Orioles (75-86) will send out right-hander Kyle Bradish (1-1, 2.25).
At the same time in Toronto, Blue Jays right-hander Kevin Gausman (10-11, 3.47), a two-time MLB All-Star, will be on the mound to face the fourth-place Tampa Bay Rays (77-84), who will start left-hander Ian Seymour (4-2, 2.85).
“To have Kev, who has been so steady, so stable and really, really damn good in the second half and most of the season, I’ve got all the confidence in the world in Kev,” Blue Jays manager John Scheider said after Saturday’s 5-1 victory over the Rays.
The Yankees have won seven games in a row and 10 of their past 11. The Blue Jays are on a three-game winning streak since dropping six of seven.
Whichever team finishes second in the division would host the East’s third-place Boston Red Sox or the Central’s Detroit Tigers in a best-of-three series in the wild-card round starting Tuesday. The AL East winner be the league’s top playoff seed and start at home in a best-of-five series in the divisional round on Oct. 4.
New York, which reached the World Series last year, is seeking its second straight AL East title and third in four years.
“It’s fun. It’s exciting,” Yankees star Aaron Judge said after hitting his 53rd home run in Saturday’s 6-1 win over the Orioles. “I wish we had a nice little cushion, a nice little lead in the division. But we’ll take it either way.”
Toronto hasn’t won the division since 2015 and hasn’t clinched it at home since 1992, when the Blue Jays went on to win the first of back-to-back World Series titles — the only ones in franchise history.
“Baseball’s funny, man,” Schneider said, adding that 162 games “is a lot, and then you look up, and of course it comes down to 162, right, to try to get to where you want to get to.”
In the AL Central, the Tigers are tied for first place with the Cleveland Guardians, the division’s reigning champion, at 87-74. Cleveland beat the Texas Rangers 3-2 on Saturday to clinch an improbable playoff spot after wilting during the summer, with the Guardians winning when C.J. Kayfus was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth.
The Guardians became the fourth MLB team and first in the AL to reach the postseason after having a 10-game losing streak, joining the 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers, the 1982 Atlanta Braves and the 1951 New York Giants. Cleveland lost 10 games in a row in July and was eight games under .500 and 15 1/2 games behind the first-place Tigers.
The Tigers wrapped up a postseason spot Saturday with a 2-1 win in Boston. If Cleveland and Detroit end up tied after Sunday’s games, the Guardians would win the division due to an 8-5 advantage in the season series, and they would host in the opening round of the playoffs.
The scheduled starting pitchers for the Texas-Cleveland finale are both left-handers — Patrick Corbin (7-11, 4.34 ERA) for the Rangers and Logan Allen (8-11, 4.14) for the Guardians.
In the Detroit-Boston finale, the Tigers will start right-hander Chris Paddack (5-11, 5.27), while the Red Sox are expected to go with a bullpen game.
The only settled division in the AL is the West, where the Seattle Mariners (90-71) clinched their first title in 24 years Wednesday night. The West’s second-place Houston Astros (86-75), who had not missed the playoffs since 2016, were eliminated from contention for a postseason berth when the Guardians won Saturday.