Mike Celizic

I don’t want to be an alarmist ...

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course, I want to be an alarmist. It’s what columnists do. (Our motto: Arrive at the scene of a catastrophe and shoot the survivors.) And it just so happens that we have in the American League a situation that’s worth being alarmed about.

I’m talking about two teams, the very mention of whose names make the bile rise in the gorge of countless baseball fans in every city in America not named New York or Boston: the dreaded Yankees and Red Sox.

We are at the halfway point of the 2009 season, and after somewhat sputtering starts the two teams everybody loves to hate — and to see — are firmly ensconced atop the AL East. Boston has the best record in the league and the second in baseball to those amazing Dodgers. New York has the third best record.

Close behind them are the Angels and Rangers, who finished 80 games in a tie atop the AL West and were going into a head-to-head series on Monday night. The loser would end the night 2.5 games behind the Yankees for the wild card. The next closest team, the Rays, were 4.5 games behind New York.

That’s not a huge lead, but the Yankees have only gotten one win from Chien-Ming Wang, their third starter going into the season, and Joba Chamberlain has been anything but the lights-out starter the team hoped he would be. And still they’ve been the hottest team in baseball for nearly two months.

On May 12, the low point of the Yankee season, the pinstripes were 15-17 and 6.5 games back of the Boston. Since then, they’ve gone 33-17 — a .660 winning percentage over 50 games. That’s not a hot streak. That’s a team on a roll that’s not likely to end soon. Remember, A-Rod hasn’t really started to hit yet, and the bullpen has been better than it has been in years.

So it may be that the rest of the AL has already had its chance and has just about blown it. To have any chance at all, the other teams hoping to make the playoffs had better do something fast. If they don’t, life will be back to normal come October: Either the Red Sox or the Yankees will be AL East champion and the other will be the wild card. The league’s other 12 teams can fight for the scraps.

A lot can happen in the remaining half of the season. There’s plenty of teams over just the past three years that were out of the playoffs at mid-season and in them at season’s end. But there are more teams — especially in the AL — that took a lead at halftime and held it to the end.

Last year’s AL playoff teams at the half pole were Tampa, Boston, Minnesota and Los Angeles. Only the Twins failed to maintain position, as the White Sox overtook them.

In the 2008 NL, it wasn’t as clear-cut. Philly, Chicago, St. Louis and Arizona led at the midway point. But the Dodgers surged into the NL West crown thanks to Manny being Awesome. And the Cardinals were supplanted by the Brewers, who were hot at the midway point and stayed that way with the aid of CC Sabathia.

In 2007, it was Red Sox, Indians, Tigers and Angels leading the divisions after 81 games. All but the Tigers made the playoffs, and they were replaced by the Yankees. In the National League, it again was less certain, with the Mets, Brewers, Padres and Dodgers leading after three months, but only the Brew Crew still playing in October and the D-backs and Rockies surged as the Mets purged.

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In 2006, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and Oakland in July became New York, Detroit, Oakland and Minnesota in October in the AL. In the NL, New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Colorado became New York, St. Louis, San Diego and the Dodgers.

It makes sense that teams leading after 81 games would continue to lead to the finish line. Eighty-one games are a lot of baseball, enough to establish what teams are made of. Barring catastrophic injuries, they’re not going to collapse — unless they’re the Mets, in which case all bets are off.

The teams that may have the best chance of breaking the New York-Boston AL hegemony are probably the Angels and Rangers, and not the Rays. That’s because the Rays have to play Boston and New York, along with Toronto, which is not a bad baseball team. The Rangers and Angels get to play the offensively challenged Mariners and the underfunded A’s. Plus, Texas and Los Angeles can be expected to push each other in a tight division race. Whether the loser can push ahead of the second-best in the East and into the wild card is the big question.

I guess we’ll let everybody play the second half. And we’ll keep telling ourselves anything can happen. But at the halfway point, it doesn’t look good for people who are sick and tired of all things Boston and New York. In looks, in fact, downright depressing.

Maybe that’s alarmist. More likely, it’s realistic.

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