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.


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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.

Ian Hunter

Ian has been writing about the Toronto Blue Jays since 2007. He enjoyed the tail-end of the Roy Halladay era and vividly remembers the Alex Rodriguez "mine" incident. He'll also retell the story of Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS to his kids for the next 20 years.

One thought on “The Blue Jays Are Now Favourites to Win the AL East

  • August 10, 2015 at 7:42 pm
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    The Yankees now have roughly a 32% chance of winning the division? Poppycock! The schedule favours them, they have more home games than road games, while the Jays have the reverse. Plus, they still lead the division, although by the 'slightest' of margins.

    I like the Jays, I think they are now a better team and will, in fact, win the division. But 32% chance for the Yankees? The numbers are off…

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