Sep 8th 2008 1:33PM by Tom Fornelli (author feed)
On Sunday afternoon the Yankees lost to the lowly Seattle Mariners, and it dropped them to fourth place in the AL East with only a few weeks left to go in the season. This basically assures the Yankees that they will not be playing any baseball come October.

Of course, the real reason the Yankees have fallen to fourth place is the surging Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays have won their last 8 games, but are still nine and a half games behind the Rays for first, and eight games behind the Red Sox for the wild card. In other words, it’s too little, too late. Still, that didn’t stop Alex Rodriguez from heaping praise upon them after the Yankees loss yesterday, and he accidentally proclaimed the Bombers dead in the process.”Toronto’s playing really well,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, a lot of people should be happy they’re not in the playoff race, because they’d be the scariest team, with the 1-2 punch they’ve got over there with [Roy] Halladay and [A.J.] Burnett.”Is that so? Well, Alex, if the Jays are out of the race, and they’re ahead of the Yankees in the standings, what does that say about you guys?When the question was repeated, pointing out that the Yankees can’t be in the playoff race if the Blue Jays — ahead of them in the standings — are not, A-Rod tried to backtrack. “What I’m saying is if Toronto was to get in the playoffs, they would be the scariest team to face, by far, with those two,” he said. “I’m not saying anything else.”No, Alex, you’re just saying what everybody’s already thinking.