The Blue Jays Are Now Favourites to Win the AL East

It’s funny how baseball works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, you’re in the driver’s seat cruising towards an AL East division title with a cozy eight-game division lead.

Other times, the Blue Jays roll into town, sweep you on your own turf, your own fans throw a home run back onto the field (which hits your starting left fielder), and he doesn’t even look back to acknowledge what just happened.

Such is life for the New York Yankees; and they’re currently at a crossroads with the Toronto Blue Jays. As the Blue Jays are one of the hottest teams in all of baseball, the Yankees find themselves stumbling towards falling out of favour in the AL East.

With the recent events of this past week, the Toronto Blue Jays have now found themselves as favourites to win the American League East.

According to NumberFire, the Blue Jays now have a 52.8% chance of winning the division, while the New York Yankees have sunk to 32.28% favourites.

Click to embiggen (via NumberFire)

The Yankees still hold a slim division lead, but the two clubs have essentially flip-flopped when it comes to odds of winning the AL East. Back on July 28th, the Yankees were as high as 74.65% AL East favourites while the Blue Jays trailed at 14.35%.

In a two week span, not only have the Blue Jays’ playoff chances shot through the roof, but so have their odds of catching the Yankees for the division lead.

What seemed almost impossible is suddenly very plausible for the Blue Jays, as they could overtake the Yankees for the division lead as soon as Wednesday night.

Hat tip to NumberFire for the data and graph. Image via Getty Images/Elsa.