Second Wild Card May Ruin Intrigue of AL East's 5-Way Division Race

There are two ways to look at the American League East.

Option A: a paragon of parity that's sure to keep fans of multiple teams enthralled through the summer.

Option B: a muddled, mediocre mess. 

Both are true, in their own way. On the one hand, just 6.5 games separate the first-place New York Yankees and the last-place Boston Red Sox, the smallest margin of any division.

Since June 27, three teams—the Tampa Bay Rays, Baltimore Orioles and Yankees—have spent time in first place.

On the other hand, no team other than the Yankees is more than one game over .500, and every AL East club will enter the second half with potentially fatal flaws. 

Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

In a season where every division is topsy-turvy—no first-place team holds more than a 4.5-game lead—the AL East is the most unsettled of all. 

This could be a good thing. Mediocre or not, close races are always fun. In a different world, it'd be a thrill to watch four and potentially even five franchises jostle for a single postseason berth.

Notice I said "in a different world." Because in this world, the one with two wild-card slots in each league, the up-for-grabs AL East scramble loses a lot of its luster.

That flies in the face of recent history, as Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post noted in May:

"

[For] more than a decade, the AL East has been the toughest division in baseball. The last time the AL East champion won fewer than 95 games was 2000, a baseball generation ago.

Over the past 10 years, the winner has averaged 96.9 victories, highest of any division in baseball. (NL West champs, by contrast, have averaged 90.5 wins.) Eight times over the past decade, two AL East teams have won more than 90 games. In no other division has that happened more than three times.

"

That was then; this is now.

Let's imagine that the Yankees, with their aging lineup and shaky starting rotation, manage to hang on and win the division. It'll be fascinating, at least, to watch Alex Rodriguez re-ascend the October stage. 

Or say it's the Rays, with their stellar starting pitching but punchless lineup—that's a cool Cinderella story.

Or maybe it'll be the Toronto Blue Jays, an offensive juggernaut that's light on arms. Or perhaps the Orioles, the defending division champs who've yet to recapture their 2014 magic.

Or even Boston, a preseason favorite undone by injuries and a lack of pitching that could still slip into the picture with a protracted hot streak.

Any one of these teams would make an imperfect-yet-intriguing postseason entrant, and watching them duke it out would be fine sport.

But two of them extending their seasons? That feels like overkill of the worst kind.

Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

"I think there's really not one team that separates themselves, that you play them and say, 'OK, this is the team to beat here,'" Orioles closer Zach Britton said, per Svrluga. "There's been some teams where you're like, 'Well, they're struggling.' But there hasn't been a clear winner."

Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe was even more blunt (via the Baltimore Sun's Dan Connolly): "There's parity in the East, but I don't think it is a positive parity."

There is an X-factor—the impending July 31 trade deadline. Any AL East contender (which is to say any AL East team) could swing a landscape-shifting deal, netting an ace pitcher in the Johnny Cueto mold or a Ben Zobrist-level bat. 

Unless and until that happens, however, we'll get more of the same: a collection of so-so squads cannibalizing one another and clustering around the .500 mark. 

Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

In the past, that would spell doom for everyone but the ultimate division winner. Now, a team could conceivably sneak into the postseason with well under 90 wins, draining drama from the division race and diluting the quality of the playoffs.

It's a risk MLB knowingly took with the advent of the second wild card. The plus side is that more teams stay in contention. The downside is, well, more teams stay in contention, whether they deserve to or not.

Then again, the wild card isn't what it used to be. Whereas once it guaranteed a ticket to the best-of-five division series, now it leads to a one-game crapshoot. 

"Your focus should be to win the division, not to try to be a wild card," Yankees skipper Joe Girardi told Daniel Barbarisi of the Wall Street Journal. He's right.

Of course, not everyone views the airtight AL East in a negative light. "It makes it better," Orioles outfielder Adam Jones told Connolly. "Everybody's competitive against each other." 

The question of who will win that competition—and how this crazy race will conclude—is as wide-open as the division itself. But there's a chance, possibly even a good one, that it won't be especially satisfying no matter what. 

All statistics current as of July 14 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.