A Yankees-Rays wrap-up, and Jenrry Mejia

I've got an early-morning flight back home, so let's just pound this out right now.

First, your updated playoff seedings:

AL: Tampa Bay (1) vs. Texas (3), Minnesota (2) vs. Yankees (4).

NL: Philadelphia (1) vs. San Diego (3), Cincinnati (2) vs. Atlanta (4).

Thoughts: The Twins are creeping toward that overall homefield advantage in the AL. They're now even with the Yankees in the loss column and one behind Tampa Bay. However, as Dennis astutely pointed out, both the Yankees (4-2) and Rays (5-3) win tiebreakers with Minnesota because of the edge in the season series. So the Twins would actually have to finish one game (or more) ahead of the AL East champ in order to gain the home field for the first two rounds.

In the NL, meanwhile, Bobby Cox's final Braves team is now even with San Francisco in the loss column, and only two games ahead of Colorado in the loss column. And Atlanta is trending downward, with two straighit losses to Washington. We'll see this weekend if Citi Field provides a cure for what ails the Braves.

--Off the Yankees game, I wrote about my sense of the Yankees' clubhouse. These were three fantastic games, all decided by one run, and the Yankees were missing two of their most valuable players, Brett Gardner and Nick Swisher - neither of whom seem to have serious injuries, but we'll see.

My point being, I don't think the Yankees felt overwhelmed by the Rays. I recall back in 2003 when the Red Sox surged. I think that Yankees team wondered how in the heck it was going to beat Boston (and in a related note, Aaron Boone broadcast last night's game for ESPN). I don't get the same sense at all here.

--Thoughts on Derek Jeter's acting? I had no problem with it. You take what you get. It's the umpires' fault for blowing the call.

I think the entire press corps was surprised that Jeter admitted after the game the ball hit only the bat. I thought he'd play along more, say, "It hit my hand" with a smile, at which point I intended to ask him, "Will you be getting an x-ray, MRI and other tests?" 

In any case, given how entertaining these three games were, I'm looking forward to next week's four-game set, and I don't think a championship series has been so desired - as this Yankees-Rays one is - since '03 and '04 with the Yankees and Red Sox.

--Jenrry Mejia's season ended in very ugly fashion, and perhaps we'll learn more today. There will be natural speculation about whether Mejia should've been brought back from his previous shoulder problem, and whether the Mets' very odd usage of him this season caused any of these problems.

Are those fair questions to ask, medically? I'm not smart enough to know. But we do know that the Mets invite such questions with their questionable history on the injury front, and also with decisions like making their stud pitching prospect a scarcely-used reliever.

--Have a great day.

--UPDATE, 11:37 a.m.: Mejia is done for the year, as expected, but the Mets are presenting this as good news. They're saying there's nothing structurally wrong with the shoulder. Realistically, we'll have to wait until spring training next year to find out.