Welcome to Bizzaro New York Baseball, where the Yankees are the Plucky Little Team That Could and the Mets have "World Series-or-bust" signs hanging around their necks.
Even as the Yankees have crept closer, no one really expected them to make the playoffs. Except for one guy.
The man in the dugout.
"I told you we expected to win from day one," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said Thursday night before rookie Tyler Austin hit a walk-off home run in the ninth inning for a 5-4 victory over the Rays at Yankee Stadium. "So there's going to be disappointment if we don't get to where we want to get."
The Yankees are getting there, improbably. They are just two games behind Baltimore for the final wild-card spot and four games in back of the AL East-leading Red Sox.
Ya Gotta Believe? In the Bronx?
If the Yankees do make it, Girardi has to get some Manager of the Year votes.
The Yankees have seven games left with Boston, four with Toronto and three with Baltimore, all three playoff teams at the moment.
The Yankees, winners of five straight and 11 of their last 15, are playing their best ball of the season. And that's after the fire sale trades of Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, Carlos Beltran and Ivan Nova, the pomp and circumstance filled release of Alex Rodriguez and the de-emphasizing of Mark Teixeira and Brian McCann (although McCann hit two home runs Thursday night).
Only two of the players the Yankees got in the trades are on the roster: relievers Adam Warren and Ben Heller. The deals were done for tomorrow. But tomorrow is here faster than anyone imagined.
Last night, Girardi had rookies Gary Sanchez, Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge in the lineup. His first man out of the pen for an ineffective CC Sabathia was rookie Jonathan Holder.
The Baby Bombers are on the stage and the Yankees are in the race, even to the surprise of an opposing manager.
"When you start injecting some real young guys in there, very little experience, you don't know what to expect," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said the other night. "And they're all playing, too. Some of them have had their ups and downs, but they keep winning. They're doing something right. I've got to believe nobody in the baseball world really expected them to hang around like they did, but they've done it. Tip your hat to them."
Gibbons did a lot of hat-tipping when he left the Bronx on Wednesday. The Yankees swept his Blue Jays out of first place.
Girardi had to manage last night without his top four relievers in Dellin Betances, Tyler Clippard, Luis Severino and Warren, all of whom needed rest.
Girardi needed length from Sabathia. He got four innings plus two batters. Sabathia got the hook with the Yankees leading 4-3.
In came rookie Holder, who earned his surname (temporarily, anyway) when he escaped a two-on, none-out jam by inducing a double play and an inning-ending grounder.
The Rays tied it anyway in the sixth off Holder when Steven Souza Jr. hit their fourth solo homer of the game. The game went into extra innings still tied at 4.
More pressure for the Yankees' rookies in the sweaty crucible of an unexpected playoff race.
"I think a lot of times the pressure a rookie feels comes from within where you want to prove that you belong," Girardi said. "But the expectations maybe weren't quite as high on them because of where we were at in the standings and that probably helped."
Girardi's right _ the expectations weren't high. Except from the man in the dugout, who wasn't going to accept a lost season. That probably helped, too.
